Second Calling: Life Purpose for Professionals at an Inflection Point

Here are three ways of thinking about whether purpose can be intentionally found.

Spirituality and life purpose are closely intertwined for many people. This raises an interesting question: Can spiritual practices lead us into greater purpose?

Jaime Kucinskas is an accomplished sociologist at Hamilton College where she studies religion, morality, and social inequality. Due to a series of tragedies in her life, Jaime turned to various spiritual practices while in graduate school. From this blossomed an interest in studying spirituality, which she did in an award-winning book The Mindful Elite. She has also researched the everyday experience of purpose and meaning.

In this episode, you'll learn about:
* The role that mindfulness plays in finding purpose
* The connection between short-term planning and long-term purpose
* The interplay between spirituality and meaning
* How our immediate social environment affects our experience of purpose
* The impact of social roles on the discovery of purpose


****

The School of Purpose is a place to learn about finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org. 

Questions? Comments? Just want to say "hi"? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you. 

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert, Music also by Josh Gilbert. 
Are you interested in starting your own podcast? Send Josh an email. He will get you going and make you sound really good. [email protected] 

This week we start something new. Every Monday there will be mini-lessons on purpose. These are short, practical ideas about how to think about purpose and act on it most effectively. Enjoy!

When does purpose first show up in our life? Does it span our life, taking different forms at different ages?

Holly Woods has made a career of helping other people find their life purpose. She is a coach, consultant, and author. In addition, she founded the group Global Purpose Leaders. Holly's work focuses on what happened in our childhood and how it affects our pursuit of purpose as adults. On one hand, themes of life purpose often show up in childhood, and our task as adults is to remember them and enact them. On the other hand, childhood suffering can create dark spots, shadows, in our lives which we need to work through to find purpose. Holly explains how this works with the clarity and wisdom of someone who has made a life of studying purpose.

In this episode, you'll  learn about:
* How to identify our childhood expressions of purpose
* The relationship between our past wounds and our current purpose
* Whether we waste steps toward purpose by taking "wrong" turns
* The discrete, nuanced nature of purpose
* The value of not doing things that aren't purposeful


You can find Holly online at https://emergenceinstitute.net/.

Her book is entitled: The Golden Thread: Where to Find Purpose in the Stages of Your Life

****

The School of Purpose is a place to learn the process of finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org. 

Questions? Comments? Just want to say "hi"? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you. 

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert, Music also by Josh Gilbert. 
Are you interested in starting your own podcast? Send Josh an email. He will get you going and make you sound good. [email protected] 

How can reading books and other forms of learning be gateways into finding our purpose in life?

Glenn Stanton is the Director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family. He's also a recent convert to Catholicism. Glenn spends his days engaging morally-related social issues that matter deeply to him. He researches and teaches about these issues with speaking and writing. But, he wasn't always engaged. In high school, he was the epitome of an apathetic student. In fact, he didn't read his first book until his early twenties, but that book set him on fire for engaging moral issues. Ever sense then, reading and learning have played an instrumental role in Glenn living out his purpose.

In this episode you'll learn about:
* The powerful role that books can play in our finding our purpose
* Why failure can actually make it easier to find our purpose
* What it feels like at an emotional level to have found your purpose
* How purpose intermingles with our religious beliefs
* The challenges and beauty of helping our children find their purpose


The School of Purpose is a place to learn the process of finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org. 

Questions? Comments? Just want to say "hi"? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you. 

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert, Music also by Josh Gilbert. 
Are you interested in starting your own podcast? Send Josh an email. He will get you going and make you sound good. [email protected] 

How do our careers give us purpose? It turns out that there are a variety of ways, and we can combine them into a wonderful career.

Julie Cyzewski worked as an elementary school teacher, but she knew that wasn't the right place for her. She decided to return to the passion of her childhood: books. She enrolled in graduate school in English and worked her way through a PhD. Now she's a tenure-track professor. She has shaped her current position so that it provides purpose in multiple domains of life-intellectual, relational, and society. This makes her career deeply life-giving to her.

In this episode, you'll learn
- What it feels like to be in the wrong career
- The power of childhood interests in guiding our later career
- How our purpose pulls us back to it when we try to leave
- The significance of relationships in all aspects of our purpose
- The different ways careers can give us purpose
- What to know if you're in the right career

The book that Julie mentions is Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing.

Enjoy!


The School of Purpose is a place to learn the process of finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org. 

Questions? Comments? Just want to say "hi"? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you. 

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert, Music also by Josh Gilbert. 
Are you interested in starting your own podcast? Send Josh an email. He will get you going and make you sound good. [email protected] 

What is the relationship between what we want in life and what we do day-to-day? How do our actions affect our sense of purpose?

Richard Lopez is an expert in neurocognitive science and behavior change. He is an assistant professor at Bard College. Richard shares with us the science of enacting our purpose in life. A purposeful life is not jus a one-time decision. Rather, there's an interplay between what is most important to us (our values), our perceptions of what we are able to do (agency), and what we actually do (behavior). Understanding the scientific principles underlying this interplay makes it easier to live a more purposeful lives.

In this episode, you'll learn
- What agency is and why it matters so much
- The connection of values with purpose
- How to bring other people into our purpose-related decisions
- How our self-understanding affects our actions
- How our actions affect our self-understanding

Enjoy!

The School of Purpose is a place to discover the process of finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org. 

Questions? Comments? Just want to say "hi"? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you. 

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert, Music also by Josh Gilbert. 
Are you interested in starting your own podcast? Send Josh an email. He will get you going and make you sound good. [email protected] 

How do artists find their purpose and express it through their work?  How does purpose fuel creativity?

In this episode, Sculptor Diane Husson passionately engages the role of purpose in her life and work. She is a sculpture who specializes in the all-but-forgotten art form of faux bois. She uses concrete to make beautiful  garden furniture in the shape of tree branches. Diane takes us through her journey from the corporate world into art. It was a path with unexpected and even mystical mystical twists. Though a success in another form of sculpting, she knew it wasn't the right one for her. She explored other options for years before finding faux bois.

In this episode, you'll learn about:  

• The interplay between skills and purpose
• Why the worst day in the corporate world is easier (but not better) than the best day at being an artist 
• A powerful definition of life calling
• The importance of crafting our life circumstances to support our purpose
• Comfort being a barrier to living our purpose

You can learn more about Diane's work at https://fauxboisfurniture.com/. Make sure to check out her beautiful work. She's also on Facebook and Instagram.  

Enjoy!

The School of Purpose is a place to discover the process of finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org.  Questions, comments, or suggestions for improvement about the podcast? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you.

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert
[email protected] 
Music also by Josh Gilbert

How important is it for college students to aim for a career that would give them a sense of purpose? What happens when they make plans without purpose?

Nick is a smart student who entered college with no sense of what he really wanted to do. So, he decided to do something that would make him a lot of money. If I can't be happy, I might as well be rich he thought. So, he decided to become a corporate lawyer. There was a problem, though, with this plan. Each year he got less happy with it. Something inside prodded him that there's more to life. Finally, in this, his senior year, he has made a complete reversal in his career path, and it's changed everything.

In this episode, you'll learn about:  

• Following intuition in picking a career
• The hazards of succeeding at something that's not meaningful to you
• The powerful and potentially harmful effect of other people's expectations for us 
• How to know if you're making purposeful plans for the future.
• What it feels like to be finally doing something that feels right

Enjoy!

The School of Purpose is a place to discover the process of finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org.  Questions, comments, or suggestions about this podcast? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you.

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert
[email protected] 
Music also by Josh Gilbert

How does a sense of purpose change our life? Does it really make a difference?

At 24 years old, Bob Turner wrote out a life purpose statement. He's now in his 70s. This purpose statement has been his guide for a half century. It led him into remarkable experiences, rich relationships, and a profound impact on many people's lives. It even had him attend one of the most significant historical events of the 20th century. He's not done, either. He still follows this purpose statement daily.

In this episode, you'll learn about:  

• What makes for a great life purpose statement
• How life purpose statements guide our lives
• How to have an influence across generations
• Why having purpose steers us away from needless busyness
• The importance of letting our life purpose unfold on its own. 

Enjoy!

The School of Purpose is a place to discover the process of finding purpose in life. Visit us at schoolofpurpose.org.  Questions, comments, or suggestions about this podcast? Send me an email at [email protected]. Would love to hear from you.

Edited and Produced by Josh Gilbert
[email protected] 
Music also by Josh Gilbert