205: What to Do When Your Purpose Starts to Suck | Deep Dive

Transcript for What to Do When Your Purpose Starts to Suck | Deep Dive (Episode 205)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:03] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer Jason DeFillippo. For a few years, I worked on wall street as an attorney doing a job I was good at, but I didn't love it. And as soon as I stumbled onto podcasting, I discovered what I like to think is my so-called purpose. I pursued that purpose for years, writing the initial honeymoon period high, bullied by the joy of doing something I actually enjoyed. We're all here to find our purpose, whether it's a job that fulfills us, a calling that compels us, or a craft that inspires us. We're all looking for those goals and experiences that give our lives true meaning. If we're willing to dedicate our lives to those meaningful experiences, we might turn them into our careers. And while I don't subscribe to the idea that every passion should become a job or that our careers have to be our only source of meaning, finding purpose in your professional life is a powerful experience. When we do what we truly love, we set ourselves up for commitment, fulfillment, and wealth in all senses of the term. Unfortunately, we also set ourselves up for frustration, disillusionment, and heartache because as soul-crushing as a meaningless job can be a purposeful job can be even more painful. When your passion gets tough your entire life, your choices, your values, your very sense of self can suddenly take a hit and unlike a typical job, but passion is much harder to compartmentalize and even harder to give up.

[00:01:24] So how do you keep going when your purpose starts to suck? What do you do when the one thing that gives you meaning also makes you miserable? That's what we'll be exploring on this Deep Dive here today. Dealing with this is a skill set in and of itself and one of the most important skill sets that I could possibly teach you along with, of course, relationship building and networking. If you're not taking Six-Minute Networking, go grab that. It is free. jordanharbinger.com/course is where that's added is extremely powerful. It is why we are here right now doing the show in the way that you're hearing it. In the meantime, enjoy this episode with Gabriel Mizrahi on what to do when your purpose starts to suck.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:03] I think a lot of people know that I started off on Wall Street, doing this job. I was a lawyer and I didn't love it. It was fine. I enjoyed parts of it and whatever. I went to law school for a similar reason like --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:02:15] Such a diplomatic way to describe the career that you did not want to do.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:18]Yeah, it was fine.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:02:19] I was fine. I liked parts of it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:21] Yeah. I mean it's sort of true. I liked my co-workers. I liked working in New York.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:02:28] And that's where you found out that you were really interested in networking and relationships.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:32] Yeah, that's true.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:02:34] It was an important phase for you from what I understand.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:37] Definitely. Yeah. And prior to that, I was in law school and I was learning about networking and relationships that then transitioned to this dating thing, which resulted in these conversations with friends at bars, which then resulted in starting a podcast. And so that's when I found, look, I'm really interested in broadcasting. I'm really interested in interviewing. I'm really interested in all of these different facets of getting people's stories and teaching and all that stuff. And that turned out to be -- and I love using this cliche -- this turned out to be kind of my purpose or my calling or my main raison d'etre, I guess you could say.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:03:15] Sure, yeah, your passion.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:16] Yeah. And I tried so hard to avoid that word because it's overused. It's beaten to death.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:03:22] But it is what is it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:23] It really is.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:03:24] It’s purposeful and it's passionate work for you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:26] It is. And I think about this a lot. I was just on a trip to a maximum-security prison with a bunch of other entrepreneurs. And I know these guys and gals really well, but it's a little bit like you get this tug at your logical brain, I guess because people are like -- who are my age or younger -- are like, "Yeah, I've just raised $30 million from my 13th company." Other buddies of mine are like, "Yeah, I have this massive supplement brand. I live in Panama." They're very, very wealthy people. And I'm like, "Okay, well we're probably equally smart, capable people." If I'd just focus and give away 10 more years of my life to this other business, I'd be super-rich. And then like, but I like doing what I'm doing now.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:04:11] Yeah. This is the thing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:12] So that's one way that I know that this is my thing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:04:16] You mean because you're willing to put in the time to build it even though it's not going to make you live in Panama and have tens of millions of dollars tomorrow.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:26] Right. I talked to my buddy like utility companies in Thailand basically and you've talked to these other guys and they're like, "Yeah, I have a $1.3 billion private equity fund." And you're just like, "Wow. That's incredible." But I'd rather do this, which is a little psycho when you put these two things next to each other, It's crazy. It's like what are you doing, you know?

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:04:50] But that's the power of doing something that means something to you in a way. And it sounds so -- this is also a bit cliche but it's a cliche because it's true -- that you would do it even if you weren't getting paid.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:01] Right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:05:01] Like if tomorrow somehow this didn't get you any money, I know that you would still be on the phone talking to people being like, "How do you book?" Or like, "What did you do when you were at the bottom of your journey and you climbed back up?" Like that's part of your DNA. It's purposeful. So I think where you were probably driving at is like, okay, so you shifted from Wall Street where it wasn't purposeful, and you shifted into something really meaningful, and then what?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:28] But also it's really hard and demanding and that's kind of the problem. When we had to switch from the old business to the new show, people were like, "You know what? Maybe you should just do something else. You're really smart. You could do this lucrative other kinds of business. You could do this online marketing, you can do dah, dah, dah, dah. You could be making $10 million a year or more." And I'm just like, “Nah. No thanks." And it wasn't like out of fear. "I don't want to do that. It's unknown." It was like, "No, I'm really liking this." And it's not like I can't put food on the table doing this. There's a lot of amazing opportunities that come from it. And we did an article about finding your purpose or finding your passion and that was really popular. And this is kind of the next beat on that, which is what happens when it gets hard. What happens when you wake up and you're like, "My voice hurts. I'm tired. I don't want to do the show. I got to read this stupid book. I don't want to read it and I'm not even interested in this anymore. And I just want to go to Taco Bell and fall asleep or whatever."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:06:27] You fall asleep in a lot of Taco Bells.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:30] And I meant -- go to Taco Bell, get food, eat it, and then go home and fall asleep. Yeah, just to be clear -- not like walking through the drive-through on foot after three beers and then like laying down in the parking lot.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:06:42] For a second, I thought I was getting a glimpse of what a sad, difficult job Jordan has. He’s falling asleep at the Taco Bell.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:51] Walking in, set your stuff down, put your head down and go to sleep.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:06:56] I mean, we’re all falling asleep in a few weird places for sure but I think yeah, what's so intense and important about this topic is that we are all here to find our purpose. And one of the things that you and I talked about in that other episode -- and by the way, I highly recommend you guys go and read the previous article and if you'd like listen to the Deep Dive -- because it was very personal for both of us, I think because we've both made the transition from the corporate world into work we really care about. Whether it's a job that fulfills you or a calling that compels you or a craft that inspires you, and whether it's your family or your friendships or your, your art or whatever, wherever you derive your sense of purpose, it doesn't matter. But if you're getting that source of meaning, there will always be a point where your passion, your calling, your purpose -- whatever you want to call it -- gets hard. It always gets hard at some point and the more intensely you pursue it, the harder it's going to get at some point. And I think what's really difficult for anybody is knowing that you are pursuing something you actually care about. And by doing that, setting yourself up for frustration, disillusionment, heartache, because a soul-crushing as a meaningless job can be -- and I think we both felt that in our previous careers -- it's a part of your life. It isn't your life and a purposeful job in many ways can be more painful.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:20] Exactly. Like I know if I was still a lawyer right now, I'd be like, "Oh man, I don't know about this work." I wasn't doing anything meaningful -- I wasn't a public defender. I wasn't a prosecutor. I wasn't like an advocate for the downtrodden. I was doing financial transactions.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:08:35] You’re like white heel or something like white glove?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:37] White shoe.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:08:38] White shoe, white glove. Is it always shoe and glove? It’s not a heel.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:42] White glove. I think it is just like a fancy butler handing you something maybe.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:08:46] White glove means like it's very hands-on and like high touch.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:50] Maybe.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:08:50] Anyway --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:51] But white shoe means --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:08:51] White shoe is what you’re doing?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:53] I don’t know you trampled people with that tender loving care.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:08:56] Do you ever wear white shoe at the law firm though?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:58] Not at that law firm. Maybe as a little go shit by --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:09:01] Bold move to do as a young analyst. Anyway, continue, you're doing financials --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:06] So if I were still doing that, I'd probably be like, "Oh man, I don't love this." I mean, I personally, I would be gone by now, but if the Jordan parallel universe version was still doing it, I probably wouldn't love it. But I'd be like, “Eh, okay. I get it." But I wouldn't be like, "I'm going to be the best at this." I wouldn't care. It wouldn't be passionate enough about it to be like, "I'm going to be the best derivatives, blah, blah, blah. The best financial transaction, mortgage back security, whatever." I wouldn't care. So if somebody else is like, "I'm the top litigator in the tri-state area." I'd be like, "Whatever. That's cool." But now with interviewing, podcasting, journalistic pursuits or whatever, "I'm like, this is important."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:09:49] This means something to you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:50] It means a lot. And the problem is when you get people who come into this space and I have to sort of like throw cold water on my face because I have a friend of mine, like Tom Bilyeu who comes into the niche and I'm like, "Wow, he's doing really well." And I have to be like, "This is good for everyone and I'm friends with him so this is good." Instead of being like, "Ah, come competition. I got to be ruthless." It means more so I think about it more. And also the downs are more miserable. There were stories of people losing their business yesterday at the prison trip and they were like, "Yeah, I'm going to start over, I'm going to pivot, I'm going to do something else." I know when we had to switch to the new show, it was like a loss of identity and like all these crazy, horrible things. But when someone gets fired from working at Deloitte and then they go to Accenture, they're probably like, "Wow, that was traumatizing. Glad I ended on the feet." They're not like having nightmares about it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:10:46] I'm still a consultant. I still have a connection to my skills. Totally, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:50] Or they're like, "Yeah, this is good. I'm going to start my own shop now."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:10:52] When your passion gets tough, your entire life, your choices, your values, your sense of self takes a hit. It's not just your financial situation or your job title or like, "Oh I really wish I had that business card."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:07] Exactly.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:11:07] That's what happens when, when work is just a part of your life, which is fine. But I think it's important to recognize, yeah, when you pursue your purpose, it's a different game entirely. Your, your emotional life is different. So how do you keep going when your purpose starts to suck. So like what do you do when the one thing that gives you meaning also makes you miserable? And the first thing I think we should start talking about today is like knowing that purpose is not the same as happiness. Meaning doing something meaningful does not automatically create joy and happiness isn't required to create meaning. Meaning and happiness are two different concepts.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:48] I think that's really important. It bears repeating. If you are doing something meaningful, it does not necessarily mean you're enjoying it every day. Like someone asked me yesterday, "Wow, you really love interviewing. I can just tell I listened to this show," and I'm like, "Yeah I do. I love it. I love creating the show," and I go, "It doesn't really feel like work." But then I kind of caught myself and I was like, "No, there are so many times that it feels like work." This doesn't feel like work. But when I'm like sitting on a plane, lugging a 58-pound case of crap around with a backpack on and like --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:12:19] You're not like, "This is so purposeful."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:21] So much meaning is being derived from this. Or I'm like reading a book and going, "Uh, I shouldn't have booked this person." This is going to be craptacular.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:12:32] Or looking at the bedside table and there are four more books that you have to get through.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:35] Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:12:36] So you can do your interviews the right way.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:37] Right, it's Saturday night. I haven't taken a weekend forever and I've got to finish 18 hours of work and then roll into a five-day business trip. I'm not thinking about the meaning derived from said preparation, but I still do it. If someone said, "What would you rather be doing right now?" I'd be like, "Well, I'm doing this and I just don't like it."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:13:02] What you just articulated is such an important part of meaningful work. Like, "No, I wouldn't do anything else, but this sucks." It’s how a lot of purposeful people feel, a lot of the time. But you don't realize that when you're thinking about making the jump to pursue your madness. Why? Because every blog and every podcast and every motivational porn, YouTube video, it's like, "Make the leap. It's going to be awesome. Everyday will be this like orgy of purpose." It's like, "No, it’s not like that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:31] Here you are on the bleach. And there's a common sort of entrepreneur joke where we see that motivation porn. No successful entrepreneurs actually watch those stupid Instagram things.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:13:43] Except probably a handful of times to be like, "These guys are ridiculous."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:46] And they're like, "What is this moron?" And there's always a cliche couple of things. One is a guy standing on a beach with his arms in the air. Like yes. And then another one is a dude’s feet with a laptop out and looking at the ocean. And so people look at that and they're like, "Whoa, working on the beach." And we always kind of joke like, "Oh he took the picture where he gets to go look at the water for five minutes during his beach vacation because he's going to go back inside soon and finish his job."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:14:13] Totally, yeah. At best, he has to go back to the small room in the hostel and fulfill all the reports.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:20] Hammer out those customer service requests or whatever, yell at his team. And then like the laptop on the legs picture where we’re always like, "Look at this poor SOB checking his email at the beach cause he's got 3000 incoming requests." And so it means something different to somebody who's sort of been in the game. But people go, "Oh well what would you do different?" "Yeah, me doing this but I don't like it." "Yeah, I do this but in grease." You know, I mean reading this crappy, terrible book and using a dead highlighter on a beach. It's just ridiculous. So the meaning is very, very divorced from the happiness part.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:14:55] It is. I mean, they're closely related and they do line up from time to time. And I don't think we're saying that you can't pursue meaningful work and be happy. That's not the case. But there isn't an automatic relationship between the two. It's not like one guarantee is the other. In fact, I would say that's quite the opposite because pursuing something meaningful usually means pursuing something difficult. And if you're going to pursue something difficult, it's going to be painful at some point because meaning is hard to come by. And it's correlated with the amount of energy required to master the craft or to fulfill the goal or to surface that customer in the way that you want to service them. Like solving a difficult problem or pursuing a gnarly goal sounds romantic, but on a day-to-day level, it's usually pretty daunting and demanding.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:41] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Gabriel Mizrahi on this Deep Dive. We'll be right back.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:47] This episode is sponsored in part by HostGator.

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[00:18:35] Don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways here from Gabriel Mizrahi. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes in your podcast player as they're released so you don't miss a single thing. Now back to our Deep Dive with Gabriel Mizrahi.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:11] This is what I always assume writers are talking about. You never read those old novels where we're like memoirs of -- I don’t know, probably Bukowski or something like, "Writing is horrible. It's a disease." And you're like, "Geez, who would ever do this?" That's what they're talking about, I think.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:19:26] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:27] They're like --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:19:27] 100 percent.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:28] The reason I go to this cafe and drink this coffee and like drink myself into a stupor by 9:00 AM so I can type on this typewriter or whatever they're doing, feeling the latest novel is that it's meaningful. They're not like, "I just love being a completely dysfunctional human being." They're medicating because this is the only thing that they feel like is worth doing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:19:49] Totally, absolutely --- by the way, a great way to perpetuate the myth of the drunken writer at the typewriter. But it is a trope because it's true. Because it gives a perfect example. But yeah, every good writer at least will tell you that the glamour of writing comes down to like painstakingly obsessing over words and sentences for weeks on end, maybe months, usually years. Like it's not glamorous now. It's glamorous to be at your book party. It's glamorous to be interviewed because he wrote a book. Those things are fun, but there are years usually of development that are really unpleasant.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:28] Yeah, I was actually talking with Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a fuck and his new book, Everything is Fucked. Of course, he’s rolling with that theme and we're friends. So I ask him all the time like, "Hey, how's the book with Will Smith going and stuff?" And he's like, "Well, I mean aside from the crippling anxiety and the fact that I'll be working with somebody that has high standards and is like richer than all of my friends and family combined and like expect all this crazy--" I'm like, "Oh, okay, so it's not just like every day kicking it with Will Smith and like being fun." He's like, "No, not really." I mean he's loving it, right, but not because of the wild thrill ride that is every amazing day of typing out this book. It's like it's a unique experience that's life-changing and interesting and fascinating, but being told, "Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly to the Cayman islands and like work really hard and cancel everything else that you had to do because Will Smith has three days off and this is like your job now." Exciting, but maybe not always super, super.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:21:31] Not at all. If you pursue your purpose, you will be miserable from time to time. And if you're doing it right, you probably should be. In the sense that if you pursue your purposefully, you're going to expose yourself to experiences that produce unhappiness a lot of the time. So that could be criticism, that could be feedback, that could be rejection. Usually--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:51] It will be all of these.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:21:52] It will be all of those things at some point. But usually, it's just the technical difficulty of the thing that you're trying to master. You're trying to find out how to be the best interviewer possible. You’re trying to articulate somebody's vague life lessons into a really beautiful book. Like those are hard enterprises to do. And if they were easy, a lot of people would do them and everyone would be happy. But they're not, everyone is not happy because everyone is not trying to do them and everyone can't do them because the craft is difficult. So it's almost like passion and happiness are negatively correlated a lot of the time. And I know that's a buzzkill and I'm not saying that you can't be happy and do purposeful work. That's not what we're saying. But the more passionate you are about your purpose, the more likely it is that, that purpose will produce unhappiness at some point. And if you, if it doesn't or if you refuse to believe that, then I think we start to perpetuate that myth, that purpose automatically equals happiness. And it's that myth that makes us so upset when the craft gets hard because we're not prepared to push through when the purposeful work becomes difficult.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:55] Yeah, yeah. Good point. So like the more you want to win, the more it hurts to lose, right? Because your expectations are high for yourself for the project. You've got all these expectations of like, "I want to be there now." You want to rush the process or maybe you don't even know what the next steps are. It's kind of the story of my life right now where it's like, "What do you want to do?" And I'm like, "Well, I have all these options." "Cool. How are you going to do that? Which one are you going to pick?" "Oh, I don't know." "How are you going to get to that one?" "Well, I don't know. The roadmap is pretty unclear for each of these," especially with creative pursuits. You talked to creative people and you're like, "What do you think my path would be?" And they're like, "Well, it's creative. So like kind of there isn't really a clear path," and you're just like, "Damn."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:23:39] There's no template.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:39] There’s no template and the higher you get on whatever hierarchy, the less the template even really exists. Like people will go, "Well, okay, if you want it to be like the best interviewer in the world, probably you'd work for a news station to be a reporter. You'd move up, you'd get your little column, then you get maybe a radio show, and then you're getting maybe your TV show and then…you're kind of like Katie Couric in '94 where she's like the face of this thing, or Brian from, what does the ABC News, Brian Williams from ABC News or NBC.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:24:11] NBC, I think it's NBC.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:12] I think it’s NBC.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:24:13] I think it is, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:13] And then it's like, but then after that, it's like, "Well, how do you get from there to like what Larry King is doing?" "Well, I don't know. You become…Cultural icon. I mean, what's that path look like? Is that necessary or is that something that happens as a result of doing these other things?" Like you don't really even know they're stress-related with that as well. And that causes you to resent the fact that you chose the occupation in the first place to. And that applies I think to people who are creating apps and everything. It's just different. It's a different kind of WTF.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:24:48] Meaning is not about happiness, it's about significance. And if you pursue purposeful work, you will find significance. At some level, you will find it more meaningful than whatever other job you didn't love or whatever the situation you left. Like that's why people pursue their purpose at least when they try to turn it into their jobs. They're trying to connect with that significance in their professional lives. But it won't make you happy. What does make you happy is a topic, a totally separate topic. And we talk about it here and there. I mean, that's a very personal thing and it's about relationships and mindsets and psychology. It's about a lot of things, but I think it's just important to decouple those two concepts and it's also important to remember that purpose is not easy. The idea that purpose will be easier than the other thing that wasn't purposeful is part of the problem because then we set ourselves up to be disappointed when the really meaningful work doesn't make it easier to get out of bed or to get excited or to push through when things are hard.

[00:25:50] I was reading an interview recently with Stacy Schiff, who's a really famous biographer. She writes these beautiful biographies, which is really difficult to work at that level. It's basically years of combing through archives, looking through documents that nobody else wants to.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:06] Yeah, like a Walter Isaacson type situation. I'm always like, "How do you do that? Why do you do that? This is a thousand-page biography of a guy that lived 400 years ago or more like what?"

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:26:18] It's insane.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:19] How? Why? The pain.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:26:21] The pain of it and the loneliness and the alienation. I mean, to me that is one of the like best examples of a needle in a haystack.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:29] I'm looking, I'm imagining some guy sitting or gal sitting in a basement musty have a public library in a remote town because they're the ones that have somewhere maybe in this pile of like card-catalog-type-looking volumes. There's maybe some original writing dah, dah, dah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:26:48] Maybe and probably not.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:50] Or it's like a copy of something that's not available cause it's in Vatican archives, which are inaccessible. But you waited 14 years on the waiting list to get access to this thing. So you're just kind of going there, fingers crossed and you're going to spend maybe four to five months looking through everything that you can because nobody else will.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:27:07] Because that's what sets you apart because that will is what will make your biography the best biography. I mean, it's really intense lonely work. Very purposeful for the people who pursue it, but really difficult. And in an interview with her, she talked  -- she said this one thing that I will never forget. She said, "There are delicious days. There are not delicious weeks."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:27] Yeah. Yikes.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:27:28] So it took me a long time to accept that reality. It can be a tough pill to swallow, especially if you left a career you didn't love to pursue one, you really do. It's hard to wrap your head around the idea that this might not be easier, just because it's more meaningful to you. Discovering that your passion doesn't feel any easier can be pretty scary, I think. And it creates a lot of disturbing thoughts that, that frankly, they chip away at your desire to keep going because then you're starting to think about things like, "But I'm doing what I love. Like if I can enjoy this--”

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:04] Like, "Oh crap, I don't love this all the time. So it's either not the right thing for me which is terrifying. Your other options are not on the table. So you're thinking, "Crap, I'm going to start up." Or, "Maybe I just can't enjoy it. Maybe I'm broken and I can't enjoy anything."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:28:20] I can't enjoy anything which is even scarier though.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:24] Like, not that I just haven't found it. It doesn't exist because I'm F up."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:28:27] I'm incapable of it. Yeah, totally. And if my passion is this hard, is it really my purpose?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:32] What about that thing that someone's grandpa said, "One day find something you love and you'll never work a day in your life?"

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:28:37] "Why doesn't that apply to me?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:38] Yeah. "I haven't found that. So obviously I'm wrong."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:28:40] I mean these are all normal thoughts. I want to reiterate that. I'm sure you would agree with me.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:46] I do agree with that.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:28:47] I want to share what I wish I had heard sooner, which is that these are all normal thoughts, but they're built on a misconception. And the misconception is that purpose should be easy all the time. It's not. In almost every case, pursuing your purpose is brutally hard and any craft done well requires a ton of hard work, determination, sacrifice, all the things we know because it means more to you. It means more to you than a traditional job. And because it means more of your purpose will hook into your hope, your happiness, your sense of self-worth, your identity. It will dictate the quality of your life. And it will -- at least in my case, the more you pursue it, it will reveal the depth of your ignorance. How hard the craft really is about? How much does it require? So it's also really joyful and really intense. There's a euphoria and a joy and like this indescribable satisfaction that you can get from that kind of work. But that comes, not just with, but because of the difficulty of the craft.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:53] Yeah. Yeah. And I find that the problem is I've tried to do things like, "Oh, I'm just going to do interviews where I'm not really that worried about the outcome." Or like, "The stakes aren't that high." And I did that for a long time. But the problem is you don't -- in the moment you might even enjoy it more because you're like, "Oh, this is just an enjoyable conversation between me and this person. I don't have to worry about my prep notes and don't have to worry about --" but then you go, "Hmm, probably not my best work." And so then you find yourself going, "Crap," when I put it on easy mode, it's more fun but then it's not really like the challenge that's there that makes the work of the best is gone and that's kind of annoying.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:30:41] Yeah, that's a really real thing. You just share. Like if you go on easy mode, you can take a little pressure off yourself, but then you rub yourself off the opportunity, the challenge really to like find out how good this can be whenever I want it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:55] It's probably like how I work out. I go to the gym and I'm like, "I'm going to do this. I'm not going to go super full heavy and then I'm going to do this," and then I'm doing, "Oh, I’ll be done by then, I'm going to be done." But somebody who's into fitness, not me, not this guy will go to the gym, and he’s like -- basically, half the time I see these guys that are at these CrossFit boxes and stuff, they're kind of like, "How close can I get to just absolutely projectile vomiting or like not able to walk out of here. That's the kind of workout I want." And I'm like, "No, not me." But that's what they're there for. That's their thing. And that's why they are there. And then, of course, they're like, "Come workout with us." And I was like, "Why would I ever do that? Let's get coffee after you're done if you can stand up straight and get yourself to Starbucks."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:31:40] And also what you were saying is that CrossFit occupies a different place in your life then than what it does for them, which we'll get into in a moment. But basically just to bottom line this, I think it's important to embrace the difficulty of your purpose. If you're going to keep going, not to fight it and not to worry that your whole life is going to fall apart when it gets hard, but to embrace the difficulty and that gives you a few benefits. And just to quickly just appreciate some of them is one of them, it gives you a ton of gratitude for the good days. And there will be good days. There's nothing like living with the suck of something to make you appreciate the days that are fun and inspiring and productive. And if a purpose were not hard, we really wouldn't understand how precious the good days are. I'm sure when you have like when you're in flow on a great interview, you're like, "Ooh!" I know how good this feels because I've been in all those subpar interviews where I've gone through the mock of like doing the hard prep to get to this point. It's only by that comparison that you really understand how good the good days really are.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:38] Exactly, yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:32:39] It also gives you a ton of appreciation for the craft. And I think this one is even more important if you're going to stick with purposeful work. Because people who find their purpose easy most of the time, I think usually don't have a true grasp of what the craft entails. I didn't have a grasp of what the craft of writing entailed for the first few years. I was just so ignorant about how hard it is because I was just splashing around in the shallows.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:03] I can spell and I'm good at grammar.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:33:05] Yeah. And I can string together sentences that sound okay. But it's like, "Hang on." When you realize how difficult it is, when it starts to get painful is usually when you are coming up against the sophistication of what you're trying to do. And then that appreciation becomes part of why you pursue the purpose. Because you're like, "Oh, I get it. I'm trying to do something that's really hard and meaningful and special. Yeah, but I didn't know that until it got hard. Now that it's hard, I get it."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:34] Right. It's like seven years in and I tell this story a bunch on the show, but Robert Greene was like, "Oh, you're pretty good at this." And I was like, "Me?" And then I was really reinvigorated with it and I was like, "Oh, I'm going to do more work." The reason it was good that episode was because I had read the whole book. Well, I'm not going to read the whole book for everyone, but I'm going to work on the show more. And then, later on, it was like, "Well, wait a minute. The uncomfortable truth is reading the book makes the show better every single time." So I was like, I just have to now do that. And then I went through this other phase where it was like, "Well, my friends filming each episode. That's ridiculous. That's like above and beyond." But yeah, you know, when I do film it, it's better because we're there and we're bringing our A-game and we're on camera. And I was like, "Crap." The uncomfortable truth is I got to do these all in person and film all the time and I've got to read the book and I've got to like -- and then more recently I'm like, "You know, these were more fun when I was funnier," and that was when I was prepped less because I was more off the cuff and I was like, "Well, I can't really do less prep, which was the suggestion I got from a lot of people that were probably not really that great at interviewing per se or like not in-depth interviewers. And they're like, "I knew you wouldn't like that answer."

[00:34:51] So now I'm like, okay, well what I'm going to do is get like an improv and comedy coach and be like I need to be super, super well prepared but then also be able to just like let that stuff live in one part of my brain and then also be spontaneous and fun and this other part of my brain at the same time. And so the uncomfortable truth again is I have to work on that skill. Because people who are just kind of naturally funny, they have done such a crap ton of work at that. Or they're, they're either on fire and they can only do it occasionally, but the people who are doing it consistently, they're really practiced.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:35:26] They're so prepared that they can be spontaneous.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:28] Right. They're so prepared that the stuff that they're prepared for is living in this automated part of their brain. And the funny stuff is happening because they're super present. That requires a ton of training.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:35:39] Totally.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:39] And I'm getting that training now. It's kind of like every time you come full circle and you're like, "I'm good,” you got to throw another five-pound plate on there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:35:49] And at the end of the process, or at the end of each of those phases, you were coming into a better understanding of what it means to be a broadcaster, like to be a true broadcaster, which is that, "I have to be on all the time. I have to be prepared as much as possible for every episode, and I have to be on camera, and I have to be spontaneous, and I have to be connected and I have to be present."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:10] Right.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:36:11] It's like it's hard to understand the totality of those things until you realise that producing a great interview is really hard.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:18] Right, and by the way, you have to be able to do that when you haven't slept much. You're tired, you feel like you're probably getting kind of sick, you're super hungry, the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet, and you have to pee -- which is me right now. All those things.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:36:32] And it gives you resilience ultimately at the end of the day, which is also a topic in and of itself, but resilience doesn't come when the purpose is easy. It gets developed. That grit gets developed when things are hard. I think we should talk a little bit about how to very tactically, how to keep going when things are hard.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:50] Yes, of course, the practical part that people actually want to learn.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:36:53] Yeah. I mean, these are, no, I think we're talking about a lot of practical stuff, but there is an element of this which is just like, "Okay, but how do I deal with it today?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:59] Like they found this today because they're procrastinating because they're in a difficult moment of their purpose and they're like, "Oh, maybe this will be a good distraction that I can pretend is relevant, and by the way, now it's going to be relevant."

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:37:10] Well, yeah, totally. Because when a purpose becomes hard, it becomes hard on two levels. On a day-to-day level, it gets difficult to execute, to focus, to produce good work. That's the difficulty of the craft. Whatever the craft is, whether it's writing or making a product or building an app, whatever it is. That level of difficulty comes from the technical aspect of pursuing your passion and overcoming it is just about consistency and learning and improving or just putting in hours. That's the set of concerns. That layer of difficulty is the set of concerns that leads to thoughts like, "I don't know what I'm doing right now," or, "I don't like the work right now," or "I'm lost or I'm confused." But on a broader level, purpose also gets difficult. On this, on this other layer which is that it becomes difficult to commit to keep going to stay connected to your mission over time. And that's the difficulty of the journey, not the craft but the journey. And I think that challenge is a lot harder to deal with because it involves like deeper issues of talent and self-worth and like love and passion and whether I have those things

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:19] Right. It's like, "Oh, well, do I even have what it takes to get to the game?"

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:38:22] Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:23] Or is this all there is?

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:38:27] Is this all there is? Did I make a mistake? Do I have enough? Did I waste my time? Exactly. And unsurprisingly, that difficulty is what leads a lot of people to quit ultimately. On the worst day, pursuing your passion gets difficult on both of those levels. So it's hard in the craft and it's hard on the level of the journey. And on those days it can be almost impossible to keep going. Those are the days when you're like literally throwing your laptop across the room or you're running away to a bar or perhaps a Taco Bell--

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:59] To a nap.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:38:59] -- to take a nap.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:39:04] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Gabriel Mizrahi. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:10] This episode is sponsored in part by Blue Diamond Almonds,

Jason DeFillippo: [00:39:13] Honey roasted-flavored almonds, Sriracha-flavored almonds, wasabi and soy sauce-flavored almonds. Do I have your attention? Why keep snacking on boring chips when you could go to the store and pick up Blue Diamond Almonds right now. Whether you're going to work bored at work or leaving work. These almonds are the perfect snack. The best part is that I don't hate myself when I eat a bunch like some of those other snacks. What are you waiting for? You know you can listen to this podcast on your way to the store, right? So don't deny your cravings. Go pick up some great flavors right now. Eat them. Blue Diamond Almonds crave victoriously.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:46] This episode is also sponsored by MedMen. Okay, so I went to MedMen. It's a dispensary, aka where they sell cannabis, but it really is like the Apple Store of cannabis. They have a huge selection of products. Everything's sort of laid out. You can see it, you can smell it. There are iPads, so you can look up information about everything. There's all these like nice hardwood tables and glass cases. The staff is all really cool and really nice. It's not the dispensary that of five years ago in California or anywhere else where you go there and you're like, "Uh, everyone here looks like they just got out of prison/maybe escaped from prison and it should not be in a customer service environment. So I really thought this was an amazing place. I'm not really that much of a cannabis user, but I was very, very, very impressed by what they have. And they have plenty of pet CBD and human CBD. So if you're not trying to get high, you can get plenty of sorts of medical benefits and there are all kinds of products there that are really, really well produced and well displayed and the people who work there just know everything about it. Jason.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:19] This episode is also sponsored by Luminary.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:41:21] If you loved How I Built This by Guy Raz, then you'll have to listen to his new podcast called the Wisdom from The Top, which is only available on Luminary. I recently listened to the episode with Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, who saved Lego and also NASA's Ellen Ochoa, very cool stuff about companies who turned themselves around and sometimes not even a company. Sometimes it's NASA, and along with Wisdom from The Top, Luminary gives you access to a bunch of other original shows from innovative dynamic creators you can't find anywhere else. The Luminary app is free to download and you can use it to listen to thousands of podcasts, including the ones you already love. All enhanced by an easy to use interface with personalized content recommendations, whether you're in the news and politics, comedy, business and tech or more luminary has the right show for you. If you love podcasts, then you need to check out Luminary. Get your first two months of access to Luminary’s premium content for free when you sign up at luminary.link/jordan. After that, it's $7.99 a month. That's luminary.link/jordan for two months of free access, luminary.link/jordan. Cancel anytime, terms apply.

[00:42:24] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. And if you're listening to us on the Overcast player, please click that little star next to the episode. It really helps us out. Now for the conclusion of our Deep Dive with Gabriel Mizrahi.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:42:51] You once told me that you used to call those your post office days.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:54] Yes, the post office days. I don't have them as much anymore, but I definitely have --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:42:59] That’s a real thing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:59] Yeah, that's a real thing. So the post office day is where, especially with the old company, they happen all the time where it was like, I'd go that this sucks so much that I would rather work -- sorry, US Postal Service -- I would rather get a job at a place like the post office where my check is guaranteed and I just do the same thing and I'm not so effing stressed all the time. And I'm not sitting on a bed because I have one room to do all of my work in and there's no room for a desk. So I'm working from my bed for 18 hours, seven days in a row with like no life. You know, those were my post office days and I would literally drive down the road or walk down the road and I'd see construction workers and I was like, they're in the sun, they're going to be done at four. Yeah, they had to get up early, but they know what they are going to be doing tomorrow. They probably have health insurance. That's dismal for me. Those were horrible. I still have those off days. Now though, Jen will cheer me up or something or I'll call a friend who's also an entrepreneur and there'll be like, "Yeah dude, everyone has these." It's usually the days where it's like you've got to be doing legal stuff and then you're, you get up, pay your taxes, and then also you're dealing with a bunch of accounting and then you've got a thing that canceled that you were looking forward to. And then you're also really tired from the night before. Like you still have those down days. But I've just had so many that I realized that there, they just pass. It's not the thing that you're feeling in the moment right then is not like the true scenario. This is now the true circumstances of your life.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:44:30] That's really important. That's another principle I think we can keep in mind. Even though in some ways we're saying that purpose gets harder, the more you do it. In some ways, it also gets easier because you know that there are ebbs and flows to those feelings.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:44] Yeah. Like every day where I'm like, “Man, I'm not looking forward to any of the interviews that I'm doing. I'm not looking forward to any of the prep that I'm doing.” And I go, “Wait a minute. Wait, wait. What have I eaten today? Okay. Not a whole lot cause I go to that. The last time I went to the gym and okay, it's been like four days. How did I sleep last night?” Before I panic and worry about my career being stagnant and over, I'm going to go work out and then I'm going to take a nap and then I wake up and I'm like, “Let's crack at this prep, I'm ready.” Or I'm like, “Let's play freaking Xbox and go to bed and start over.” And then --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:45:20] You have some perspective.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:21] -- I'm good.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:45:22] Yeah, totally.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:23] I'm good. But before 10, 15 years ago, I was like, “Nope, I just made the wrong life choice and I'm going to end up miserable and broke.”

Gabriel Mizrahi:  [00:45:30]  Yeah. “I had a bad day. So it must be, oh, it's over.”

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:32] Yeah. My life is over.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:45:35] So just to come back to this thing of like, “What do you do today? How do you make this tactical?” Well, in moments when your purpose gets so hard that it gets hard to keep going, a really powerful technique is to focus on the micro over the macro. And what we mean by that is when you focus on what is in front of you right now. So that could be, I have to read this book for this interview. I have to book that guest for next month. I have to learn this piece of code. I've clearly just revealed my ignorance about coding because I don't know how to code. Whatever you have to learn or do or prepare, whenever that very specific tactical thing is when you do that, you force yourself to simply do the next thing and to ignore the more terrifying questions about the bigger picture. Instead of worrying if you have enough to make it as an author, you finish that paragraph. Instead of questioning whether you know the little house you're building, like the extension of your house will look okay once you finish you, you just sand that piece of wood. What that does when you deliberately go small and that way, you create these concrete tasks, that short circuit the paralysis that comes with questioning all of these big things about purpose. That doesn't mean that those questions are irrelevant. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't ask them. It just means that if your goal is to learn how to keep going, then sometimes the best thing is just to keep going.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:57] Like forced yourself to execute even if you don't feel like it and you can compartmentalize that feeling a little bit.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:47:04] Totally. And why does that work? Well, for one thing, going micro forces you to execute even when you don't feel like it, which of course would be your goal if you weren't experiencing all that doubt and misery. So by forcing yourself just to do what's in front of you, you short circuit the voice that says, “It isn't worthwhile. You don't have enough. You're too tired or whatever.” You jumped straight to the end game.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:26] “You can't finish this marathon.” “Look, I'm just going to finish the next mile.”

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:47:29] “I’m just going to finish it and then we'll find out.”

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:30] “Yeah, maybe I'll walk the rest of it. That's fine. It's an option. But I'll run the next mile.” And then you end up finishing.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:47:35] That's a really clever hack and it's so simple. And sometimes the fact that it's so simple is why we doubt that it can work, but it does work in a lot of cases. The other reason which you just pointed out is that growing micro forces you to compartmentalize. So it's interesting the brain, the human brain has a really hard time doing two significant things at once. Like either, it can despair over the bigger picture or it can focus on doing a specific task as well as it can. The deeper you go into the task in front of you, the harder it is for your brain to ruminate on these questions that keep you stuck. The bigger questions about your purpose. Like you'll always be free to return to those questions later if you want to, but you'll probably think a lot differently about them if you've done more of the work for that day. So compartmentalization, which is really just a fancy word I think for like discipline, for discipline thinking. Will allow you to continue your work even when it gets hard if you focus on the micro. But the biggest benefit, and I think the most significant one is that going micro often reconnects you to your purpose. And it's a paradox because you think like if I have questions, big questions about my purpose, then I should question them and I should try to find answers to them for me to stay connected to what I really want to do. But sometimes it's not about answering the questions, it's about continuing to do the work that gives you that connection to your purpose again. When you commit to doing the work in front of you, even when you're not sure if it's worth it, you usually rekindle your relationship to your goal even a little bit. It's a lot harder to despair about writing when you're writing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:11] Yeah. It's really hard for me to think about, I don’t know, Sam Harris has more downloads than me. That is not that common of equip. But I'll be like, “I don't enjoy this. I know my interviews are going to be horrible,” but if I'm listening to an audiobook and taking notes like I'm just doing that and then often that will just pass. And there's a lot of times, I'll make a conscious choice to do that because I'm like, you know, I can spend the next hour thinking about how I'm probably not going to ever have my own CNN show or something, which I have no basis for that other than that's how I feel at that time. Or I can do the next thing that I have -- for sure -- have to do, which is like taking notes for this next interview or like go for a walk and make these phone calls. And one choice is clearly more productive than the other one. Because I'm not going to come up with a satisfactory answer. There's got to be people that focus on the micro all the time and then never think about these big questions. And that's a problem.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:50:11] That’s a problem and we have to talk about that because there is a line and I think it's a fine line, a shifting line, between discipline and denial. So is there ever a time when we do need to question the bigger picture? You know like can bearing yourself in the micro ever become a way of just sticking your head in the sand. And like not wanting to confront the truth and the answer is “Yes”. But it's a tricky thing because they can look a lot like each other and sometimes you can be very disciplined one day and do your work and sometimes you can be what looks very disciplined another day and be totally ignorant of what you need to be asking yourself.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:51] One way that I've gotten around this, and I got this from entrepreneur friends of mine and in particularly Noah Kagan of sumo.com and AppSumo was he said, “Make an annual plan.” I don't know if he was trying to get me to like reconnect with my purpose or whatever, but he's like, “Make an annual plan and then just stick to it.” And I thought, “Well, that's really dumb, simple advice,” but I thought, you know what, I've never done that because I worked with an old company and they would change everything every five minutes. And then when we started the new one, we didn't have the ability to be like, here are all these things we'd like to do. It was plugged the holes in the ship so we can make money and survive. But this year we made one in January and it was like, ”Cool.” “Am I going to write a book this year?” “No.” “Am I going to do more YouTube?” “Yes.” So the interviews would go on YouTube. So that means we have to learn videography, we have to get the film kits set up, we've taken lessons on this and that, dah, dah. And so we plan everything out. New website is coming soon, new this, new that. Then we went. That's a lot of stuff. Okay, cool. We're going to have to check in on that every week. Now, when someone's like, my agent will call and go, “Jordan, how are we doing on the book front? “And I go, “It's not going to happen until next year. I've already planned out the whole year,” and they're like, “All right, I don't love that, but fine.” So I don't have to spend excesses of cognitive resources going, “But there's this shiny object over there.” Now, sure, If something really compelling happens and it's like, “Hey, would you want to shoot a pilot for a TV series? You need to block off a week to do it.” “Sure. Why not?”

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:52:12] You can still be surprised.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:12] I can still do it and be surprised and focused on something like that. However, I'm not going to go, “Huh, let's change the goals around, because I had three hours this weekend at an airport lounge and I decided to change everything,” and frankly I worked with marketers in the past and other people that I've kind of in part fired because they do that. They'll go, “New plan, we're selling this instead.” “New plan. We're going to have this kind of funnel.” And I'm like, “Okay, if you're going to be distracted by that, you're going to distract the whole team and you're never going to get anything of note done so it's not a fit. You got to go.” That's painful, but I see this problem happening a lot and there is that element of being very tempted to get a new app to plan for your workflow. Instead of like doing a freaking practice run or doing the prep work that you have to do. You'll get an app to organize your notes better. So I decide when I do that, I want to catch myself doing that. Of course, the annual plan helps. The weekly planning meetings that we have here on the team helps, but if I decide to do that, I'll go, “Cool. I can look at productivity apps at 7:00 p.m. when I'm done with work. When we're watching Netflix, I can find it around on my iPad and instead of like mindlessly playing candy crush or watching Vice News.” Yeah, I'll look for productivity apps. That's when I allow myself the luxury of getting caught up in the details and sort of circle jerking on some minutia. That doesn't move the ball forward. Most of the time, I go, “Yeah, no really new good apps out there. I'm just going to stick with Google Docs. Thanks.” Because you, it is very easy and very tempting to go, ”Whoa, I've got all this really complex stuff to do, but you know what? They updated this email thing. Why don't I migrate all my email from Google Suite to dah, dah, dah.” Like it's really tempting to do that. And I see entrepreneurs and business owners doing this all the time.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:54:09] So what you're talking about is kind of like creating a space and a time to question certain things so that the rest of the time you know that you are just there to execute. So discipline is knowing when to think about certain issues. Denial is refusing to think about them at all. So when you choose to finish your day’s work by focusing on the tasks in front of you, you're being disciplined. When you only focus on your work and you refuse to reflect on the bigger questions you might have about your purpose and your journey, then you might be slipping into denial.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:40] Agree. And one of the things that really caused us to do the annual plan was I really didn't want to do it. And it wasn't like, “Oh, this is a waste of time.” It was, “Wow, I have to prioritize my entire year. That's kind of terrifying.”

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:54:57] That's kind of daunting. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:58] Because then I've got to kind of get married to these ideas of what I'm going to do and then I have to think about all these really hard things that need and must be done. And then I have to face the idea that some things are going to take longer than a year. And the idea that I'm going to have to not pursue other things that I really want to do because there just isn't enough time. I just didn't want to face that reality. So I finally sat down and was like, that just means I really have to do this. And I did it and it was awesome and powerful. There's a lot of freedom in somebody's going, “I've got this great thing you should do.” And I go, “It's not on the annual plan, so I'm going to say no, I don't even have to think about it really.”

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:55:36] Yeah. I see that. And I wonder if maybe another thing that was kind of hard about it was like knowing that if you were disciplined in that way, you wouldn't have a reason to avoid doing the work every other moment of your life. You know what I mean? Because you're like, I'm going to quarantine those big questions to this practice. It's an annual thing and a weekly check-in and that's it. That's our time to talk about the bigger stuff. Without that in place, you might've been thinking about that every day. You might've been thinking about it every couple of hours. That might have been easier. It felt easier to you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:12] It is and you second guess yourself. And you go, “Well, I'm going to do this instead.” But then when you've committed in January and your team's been working on stuff, you go, “Well, this is what we've decided to do.” There's no backsies on this stuff. Unless it's like, “Okay, this just didn't work.” “It's ROI negative. It's flushing money down the toilet. We're stopping it,” but I'm not going to throw a bunch of stuff in there and be like, “Hey, just pause this other thing because it's less exciting.”

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:56:38] Yeah. Yeah. Making execution a commitment on the day to day and then carving out a practice or a time, whether it's like an hour a week or it's an annual goal-setting thing or whatever to reflect on the bigger picture. I think that's really important. Another important thing is --and this one's really obvious, but I think it's really worth exploring -- is that sometimes we just have to remember why we're pursuing our purpose in the first place. In the early days of pursuing your purpose, you're so connected to the mission because you just left whatever you were doing before. It's the early days. You're thinking about it constantly. So your exuberance about that will sustain you through the difficulty of the early days. For me at least, that was kind of like a fuel that protected me against frustration and boredom. But over time that excitement naturally wanes, you lose that buffer. I think you don't have as much raw hope and pure enthusiasm because as we keep talking about it gets hard. And the day-to-day grind of the goal can usually eclipse the bigger reason that you were pursuing the goal in the first place. And once that happens, it's, it's really crucial to take a step back and remember why you're pursuing your purpose in the first place.

[00:57:55] And I think if I asked you that right now, you would take a moment and you would just come back to a very simple thing that I've seen in you and I see in your show, which is like, “I really need to understand why people do when they do. I love dissecting the playbooks of people who are at the top of their field.” Like that is your purpose. That is what binds you to this show. That simple childlike obsession with a deeper mission is at the core of every good purpose, but it gets obscured. I think it gets covered over. It gets lost really in the day-to-day of everything and the harder it gets the more it gets lost.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:32] Yeah, and you hear about this from successful people all the time where they'll start some -- an example would be like they start some restaurant and then other restaurant owners are like, “Wow, your restaurant so successful,” and you're like, “Oh yeah, I do online marketing.” And then they shift to online marketing for restaurants and they're doing it and they're really successful and they're making all this money and they're like, “I hate this.” And everyone's like, “What are you talking about? Why?” And they're like, “I like cooking food and having people eat it and like being around that environment and I'm in an office with 17 team members doing IP contracts and visual marketing assets for someone's new Yelp launch, like F this. How did I end up here?”

Gabriel Mizrahi: [00:59:11] It's like you ended up here because you pursued the thing you cared about, but once it became successful, it took you further away from that core. That's hard. I remember hearing, and this might be a bad example in this day and age, but it's actually a really meaningful one. I remember hearing that several years ago, Mark Zuckerberg would try to carve out -- I want to say an hour, but I doubt it was an hour -- but he would try to carve out time every day to do a little coding. Zuckerberg is not coding today. He's dealing with some more serious issues that he has to deal with as the CEO of this incredibly complicated company. But I'd say what got him into Facebook in the first place was that he loved coding. He was an engineer, but Zuckerberg is not an engineer anymore. He's a CEO. And I'm sure he has his own ways of staying connected to it. He talks a lot in interviews and public statements about connecting up the world and you can poke holes in that and you can question whether he means it and you can question whether Facebook is really still doing what it was designed to do originally. I'd be willing to bet that part of the reason he talks about that so much is almost to remind himself of what he's here to do because if he didn't have a connection to that purpose, to that mission, why would you deal with all of the pain and frustration other than the fact that he can't walk away, which is a powerful motivator and there's a lot of money at stake. Obviously, these are huge parts of the equation, but really on a day to day level, if that guy were not committed or didn't at least choose to be committed to that deeper mission, the whole thing would fall apart. He would be miserable every second of the day, which who knows maybe he is.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:55] It's possible.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:00:56] It's possible. He would be more miserable if he weren't.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:58] You see a lot of Silicon Valley-type people doing things like, “Oh, I'm going to cure every disease.” Well, that's great and lofty and gets good PR. But I think what it also is, “Hey this whole connecting the world thing and carving downtime everyday to code and it's not really doing so much. And eventually, people won't care about any of this, but they'll probably always remember the guy who cured every disease. And that's far more interesting than trying to acquire like WhatsApp data. So, maybe I'll focus on that a couple of hours a week and like to achieve a new purpose or new meaning.” And when you lose sight of your deeper motivation, you can always return to that activity or other activities that will help reconnect you. One that I do a lot is to talk to somebody and be like, “Okay, what's going on? Am I crazy? Am I a big failure? Make me feel good about myself.” I can't have somebody --

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:01:49] I would argue, Jordan, that it's not just about making me feel better. It's about giving somebody some space to articulate out loud what it is, why it is that they're doing what they do. We've had those conversations. When we feel disillusioned or stuck, I think we used to sit with those feelings and just internalize them because maybe for good reasons, you're like, “Well, this isn't other people's job. This is my job.” But of course, that just makes it worse. In my case, I began to doubt whether I was really cut out to pursue my passion all because I assumed that I had to stay connected to my purpose on my own. But over time you start to realize that it's really helpful -- there's also a part of this that can be indulgent and can take you away from your work and that's a different thing. But if you're doing it in the right way, in a disciplined way, it's really helpful to discuss your work with someone else. And when you do that, when you articulate your motivation for doing something to someone else, you're able to revive that motivation for yourself. You have to almost hear it out loud and have somebody reflect it back to you to mirror it back to you when you can't mirror it back to yourself. So now when you get lost or frustrated, I notice that you do book time with a friend. I try to do the same and you ask them for some space to explore your reasons for doing it because you need to remember and need to remember.

[01:03:05] The other thing you can do, which is another version of business to write about it and writing about it is kind of the same as talking to a friend. But the difference is that the hard surface you're coming up against is not another human being, but the page. And in some ways, it can be more helpful because you can sort of have some stream of consciousness sort of writing experience. And you can, you can talk yourself through it, but you also create an objective record of your motivations and reasons which you can come back to. Some people find this like really, really helpful. They have a journal. Sometimes they even have certain documents that almost like a mission statement for themselves. It's kind of nice because the conversation can fade into memory, but a piece of writing can stay and you can reread it over time. And ultimately what that does is it lets you track your story and that narrative of why you decided to do something in the first place is what can get lost when the purpose gets hard. When you lose your connection to your purpose, it's usually because you've lost sight of the larger narrative, your story of why you decided to pursue your purpose. And it's important to see how that story is unfolding when things get tough.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:11] And of course what we can do when things start to unravel or if they start to unravel is we can recalibrate our purpose as well. One of the ways in which we can recalibrate our purpose is to pivot. We've talked about this on the show before, you might need to do something else that's sort of tangentially related to this. And you and I were talking pre-show it -- we've done a whole shows about this. You see media companies do it. You see app companies and tech companies do it, but a lot of people do it in their own career where they're like, “You know, I love, I love the food thing and I love the writing thing, but it's just not working for me.” And it's like, “Okay, well maybe you need to write fiction and you need to do other things with food that create that same level, maybe you don't need to be a food blogger. Or maybe you like eating a bunch of different stuff and making content about it, but maybe YouTube is not really where it's going to be for you. Like you don't like the video element. You like eating and talking about it. Maybe you do need to be a food blogger instead of a videographer or YouTuber.” So there's, there's these little shifts that can have.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:05:17] Yeah, pivoting in your purpose means that you're connected to the right source of meaning, but you're going about it in the wrong way. So you love writing and you want to say something original, but you're not meant to write a novel. That's okay. You're meant to edit a magazine or to write a newsletter in your company or to explore your writing in another form. And that can actually get you closer to your purpose by stepping away from the form that you were so attached to.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:39] You can also just not do it anymore.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:05:41] That's also an answer.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:42] Yeah. I mean, I know quitting is like not cool these days because you got to push through everything, #hustle, #nevergiveup, #followyourpassion. But sometimes you should not do that at all. And sometimes those facetious hashtags are garbage.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:05:57] I'm glad you're bringing it up because I know it's a bit of a buzzkill to talk about this and that's why so few people talk about it. But it would be irresponsible not to talk about it because if you pursue a purpose that isn't correct, it's not right for you for whatever reason, that is no way to live a life. It doesn't make sense to produce a ton of unhappiness or to stick with an idea of what your purpose is instead of finding out what your real purpose is that doesn't serve anybody. Honestly, so many of the episodes that you've produced with amazing people, they've talked a lot about quitting. They've talked about, “Yeah, I had to put that down. And the moment I put it down, I opened up space and time in my life to find out what else I should be doing. And that's how I found the product I was supposed to build.” They wouldn't have found it if they didn't give it up.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:45] Another thing we can do is shift priority. And I know a lot of people talk about this where they'll be like, “Oh yeah, you know, I'm going to quit podcasting if I don't start making money doing it.” And I'm like, “How long you've been doing it?” “Oh, like six months,” or, “A year,” or, “10 years, whatever.” And I'm like, maybe it doesn't need to be your job. Maybe this is a hobby that pays for one of your vacations each year and that vacation is to podcast movement or whatever, Podfest. Maybe it's your cool hobby that you kind of wish was your occupation, but right now you're stressing because you can't pay rent. You've got 18 different podcasts because you need the revenue and you're consulting, but you don't like that because you got to do dah, dah. Maybe you should teach other people how to do the tech setup and you should work for the hosting company or whatever and you should do this other thing that you also enjoy and stop ruining your favorite thing by trying to make it your job. If you love creating videos and putting them up on YouTube, it doesn't mean you have to be an influencer and make you a living off AdSense or revenue or come up with an info product to sustain you. It might just be something you do that you're known for that as a hobby and doesn't end up paying for your mortgage.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:07:56] Again, most people don't like to talk about that because it sounds a lot like quitting, but it's unsexy, but it's actually quite the opposite. Because if you shift the priority of your purpose, you often find a way to hang onto it. You protect it by giving it the correct place in your life.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:08:11] Exactly.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:08:12] You preserve the joy that the project brought you by not forcing it to become something that it shouldn’t. So where does that leave us? I mean look, at the end of the day, it's really, it's a really important part of pursuing your purpose to embrace that it is not always easy, that it doesn't automatically make you happy. And as unsexy and sad as it can be, the more you pursue a purpose that really means something to you, the more you are going to find it difficult and confusing and demoralizing. But once you realize that that's part of the package, something else opens up and that's something you don't hear a lot about and that's, that struggle exists whether you pursue meaningful work or not. Meaningful work is often the hardest of all. But after 15 years basically of doing this, I know that you've found that the best strategy is not to deny or minimize the pain of it, but to make meaning out of it. And when you find significance in the struggle -- and I know this has been true for me -- when you find significance in the struggle, you actually create an opportunity to create even more significance if you use it to teach you more about what you're trying to do and why.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:09:21] That's right. Meditate on that grasshoppers. Gabriel, thank you so much.

Gabriel Mizrahi: [01:09:24] My pleasure.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:09:26] Hope that was useful for everyone. I loved that conversation and a great big thank you to Gabriel Mizrahi for that as well. His work is always stellar and making me sound smarter than I really am online. I always appreciate that. If you want to know how I can have all these great relationships in my life like Gabriel and all the other people that you hear on the show as well as my personal life. Honestly, there's a lot of overlap and this has been a life-changing endeavor for me. I made a course about how I manage these relationships. Reach out to people the courses free, and it's at jordanharbinger.com/course. It takes just a few minutes a day. That's why we call it Six-Minute Networking, so go at it, jordanharbinger.com/course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Gabriel Mizrahi on this Deep Dive, I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com/youtube.

[01:10:18] This show is produced in association with PodcastOne and this episode was co-produced by Jason “Producing Our Purpose” DeFillippo and Jen Harbinger, show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful that should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

[01:10:47] Today, our podcast is sponsored by another podcast, and that podcast is called Movie Crush. Every Friday, Chuck Bryant of Stuff You Should Know sits -- that's another podcast, of course, or the huge one -- sits down for a deep dive conversation with people across the entertainment industry about their life as it relates to film, their career, and most importantly, their favorite all-time movie. So he'll pick someone like Dax Shepard and talk about their favorite all-time movie and it's influenced their lives. He's got like Dax Shepard, John Hodgman, Roman Mars, even takes like my favorite murder podcast crew and they talk about The Silence of the Lambs. So the show is not just about movies, it's about life and how movies influence us from childhood on and what it is about. A favorite movie that kind of makes you go back again and again. You can find that show Movie Crush at Apple Podcasts on the iHeart app or anywhere you listen to podcasts.