Living with Purpose as an HSP: How It Helps You Thrive & Manage Stress

Alan: [00:00:00] A cup of water. Okay.

Todd: Okay, this episode is part four of a special interview with Dr. Alan Rosansky on the six domains of health. You’ll find parts one, two, and three in episodes 192, 195, and 198 of this podcast. If you haven’t listened to the other episodes yet, Dr. Rosansky has been a cardiologist and a researcher. in mind body medicine for over 40 years,

Alan: if

Todd: a unique perspective, I think you’ll find in these conversations.

He has co authored over 300 peer reviewed medical articles and book chapters, many of which are regarded as seminal contributions in the medical field.

Alan: link

Todd: tenure at Mount Sinai [00:01:00] Morningside and Mount Sinai West Hospitals in New York City, he has served as professor of medicine, director of nuclear cardiology, and the leader of the cardiology fellowship training program.

He also previously served as chief of cardiology. Dr. Rozanski brings a unique and holistic view of health and in the first episodes we gave an overview of Dr. Rozanski’s six domains of health and we dove a little deeper into the domains of physical health, mental vitality, emotional mastery, and social connectivity.

And today we’re going to look more closely at the next domain of health, which is purposeful living. So, it’s great to have you back with us today, Dr. Rozansky. Please, uh, thank you so much for being here with me.

Alan: It’s a pleasure. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Todd: Excellent. So, what do you mean by purposeful living? Um, can you just give us a little overview of that?

Alan: [00:02:00] Sure. Well, it’s the feeling that one’s life is meaningful and it’s directed by goals and aspirations That’s what we mean by purposeful living. It’s a health domain, and it is one of the domains, what we call, um, basic psychological needs. Last time we talked about social connectivity, about the need to be connected to other people. We defined that as a basic psychological need. So what are basic psychological needs? There are, their needs, just like our physical needs are, but they don’t show up in the same

Todd: Silence.

Alan: needs, you’re meeting, meeting this needs of your soul, if you will, for Purpose to be connected to others, a sense of growth, a sense of [00:03:00] autonomy is another basic psychological need, meaning that what you chose to do is self directed, and when you fulfill these needs, what you feel inside is a sense of vitality. People who have a strong sense of life direction, they feel more energetic, they feel more resilient, they have more inner drive, you can sense this in people. So it’s a sense of energy and it’s a very pleasurable feeling, which we tend to take for granted, you know, when we have it, but we notice it when we don’t. When you don’t feel a sense of purpose, when you feel bored, things just don’t feel right. So it’s a basic psychological need that people have. And when you don’t fulfill it, you have this sense of something’s not right in life. And you may misplace it. You may think you need, you’re hungry, you need to go to the refrigerator, maybe feel you need to lie down or just you feel tension, but you can’t really place it somewhere. But that lack of sense of goals and purpose and feeling bored, it affects you in a palpable way.[00:04:00]

Todd: Yeah, I can understand that. Um, I’m curious when you mentioned some of the other, uh, psychological needs like growth and, uh, I can’t remember if it was independence or something like that

Alan: to have a sense of autonomy, to

Todd: autonomy.

Alan: self acceptance of yourself would be another

Todd: Okay.

Alan: psychological need.

Todd: So I’m curious, like, why did, um, Why did purposeful living end up as one of the domains of health and maybe not, uh, sense of autonomy or, or some of these other psychological needs as well.

Alan: Well, that’s a great question. I wouldn’t say that they don’t show up. It’s just maybe that we can’t measure them as clearly, and they’re interrelated. You know, autonomy is that sense to feel that you’re, um, Your direction is self authored, so to speak. So it ties in with a sense of purpose. But you could look at it as what’s the most need that [00:05:00] people have.

And even beyond their need to be connected to other people, is their need to feel that their life is meaningful and has purpose. So that’s, um, you know, you have, um, goes all back to biblical sources. Aristotle. Maslow talked about, you know, people’s hierarchy of needs. And he started off with a need for, to feel secure, but his highest need was, or the highest hierarchy was self actualization,

Todd: Yes.

Alan: self transcendence, which is like, you know, being part of something larger. So you have many theorists, uh, uh, Victor Frankl, famous psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. And he said as long as people had a reason keep living, That gave them strength to endure the most awful of awful you can imagine, but once that sense of meaning in their suffering was gone, their energy to withstand the trauma [00:06:00] was no longer there.

Todd: Yeah. Do you think that the, the sense of, um, like purpose or purposeful living as you mentioned it, uh, or meaning purposeful Uh, has anything to do with, with connecting with something larger than yourself or something that, uh, like you said, with Maslow’s self transcendence in a way, like, can you speak on that in terms of purpose as you see it?

Alan: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think there’s a hierarchy in terms of your sense of meaning. Uh, I think this can change in terms of the life course. When you’re young, just being able to be successful in getting good grades or getting into a college or in college. You know, getting into a grad school, you go along the course you know, you can have shorter term goals and fulfilling them can fulfill your need for purpose. interesting when you look at all the theorists and actually now medical data to support it too, is that as you get [00:07:00] older, The drumbeat in terms of, am I in a, living with a sense of integrity, meaning a sense of authenticity as to who I am, a sense of some larger purpose, that goes larger. So as you get older, you start to feel that a little bit more.

So it’s kind of interesting. Uh,

Todd: That’s interesting. Yeah, that kind of resonates with me as well. Like there’s, there’s, um, there are more kind of selfish goals, if you will, and more selfless goals. There’s some kind of smaller goals, um, like little bits of meaning and then larger bits of meaning. And I can see that, uh, I can just look at my own experience, how that has expanded over time as I’ve lived.

Thank you. Silence. [00:08:00] Silence. Uh,

Alan: you look at this kind of work, they didn’t really look at older people much, earlier generations as they do now, but he talked about, as you get older, this need for integrity versus this need for, um, not having fulfilled your sense of purpose. So, um, uh, there’s a, and there’s a, um, Little was the name of another psychologist, uh, and he wrote a paper called, uh, Life Projects, or Little Projects.

He looked at what people do, and he described that when people are young, they can fulfill what he called their sense of efficacy. In other words, there’s, they could feel fine, just fulfilling, you know, the more immediate things that are in front of them. And that would give them a good sense of life purpose. But he said as people got older, [00:09:00] they needed to get more into a sense of integrity. And just being able to be successful in your job started to cut it less and less as people get older. So there

Todd: yeah. Silence.

Alan: desire as you get older to kind of connect the dots of your life and to feel that you reached a sense of potential, that you’ve, that your life was meaningful and that you wanted to make a difference. This is, um, this is what, uh, people have talked about. Again, you go back to Aristotle, you can just see all these writings over the course of generations in a very profuse wisdom literature.

Todd: Okay, so we’ve talked a little bit about the connection, the first of all, just the understanding of it and a little connection to the past, uh, understanding as well, uh, past philosophers And, uh, wisdom. Talk to me a little bit about the medical evidence that you have now to help support this being, uh, an important domain for [00:10:00] actual health.

Uh, and so,

Alan: Sure. So, you know, if you’ll say, this is kind of a paradox, because you have a, let’s say, a wisdom literature that goes all the way back. But looking at this from a medical point of view, you’d say this is one of the later members of the family. Just something we’ve been studying over the last 15, 20 years. This is such a brand new field. So there were studies that began to appear in, you know, 2003, 2004. The first of these that I saw was in the Japanese literature, which were epidemiological studies where they would give people, as part of their questionnaire, like we had, I’d ask people about, do you have high blood pressure, diabetes or whatever. They, first days was just single item questions where they would ask him, do you have the sense that your life is meaningful as opposed to not? And then he would follow them for, you know, 10 years, 12 years. And lo and behold, those who reported a higher sense. Of meaning or [00:11:00] purpose in a life had better outcomes.

They were living longer. First thing that we’re looking at was just in terms of longevity. There was enough of these studies, however, published that in about 2015, we did a men analysis of 10 studies. By this time, there were over 130, 000 and the results were highly consistent, and the meta analysis showed a reasonable size effect, about a 20 percent reduction in mortality risk if you’re reporting a strong sense of life purpose. So that’s epidemiological data.

Todd: Wow.

Alan: we didn’t have data on degrees of, uh, purpose in that meta analysis, but there’s a subsequent study that came out from the Health and Retirement Study, which is a large epidemiological study with a used a scale to measure your sense of life purpose. And in that study, the stronger your sense of life purpose, the longer your longevity.

Todd: Wow.

Alan: you know, it’s not like we have a lot of those kinds of studies, but that’s still [00:12:00] impressive data.

Todd: That’s

Alan: that with other data, for example, there’s studies out from the, uh, Patricia Boyle from the University of Pittsburgh did studies looking at People’s, uh, respectively in older people, who did not have cognitive dysfunction, measured their sense of life purpose and then followed them for the development of cognitive dysfunction or dementia. And the people who had a stronger sense of life purpose, reported on questionnaire, had lower risk for developing cognitive dysfunction or dementia. So, um, and then there’s more recent studies which have looked at sense of life purpose and your risk for developing depression, anxiety, and even perceived stress. it seems to have a very favorable effect as far as that. and then this also, there’s this recent studies looking at people where they measure their walking speed and grip strength. at rest, looked at people who had normal walking speed and [00:13:00] strength, looked at their report sense of life purpose, followed them over the course of years.

And those who had a higher sense of life purpose maintained a higher walking speed and more grip strength than people who did not have a sense of life purpose. So when you put this data together, it’s all relatively new, but it’s quite exciting, I think, and

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: establishes this as a truly legitimate health domain.

Todd: Okay. So it, it lines up with the, the theory that we’ve been playing with here. Um, the understanding that, that having a sense of purpose, um, is important, but this is showing up in terms of statistics, like 20 percent reduction in mortality, lower risk of dimension, depression, and, uh, and all of that. So that’s interesting.

It gives another. way of looking at it. You know, sometimes we think of like some of us are more health obsessed than others. Some people are more, you know, they’re not as interested. But if, if health is one of your things, then seeing the [00:14:00] numbers of doing something else can actually give motivation to, to take care of, uh, some of these unseen factors.

So, um, yeah.

Alan: you know, I, I think we have, society, so much think of health in physical terms. You know, do I have high blood pressure, diabetes, things like that. We just can’t help but think of it in physical terms. yet when we’re challenged and you ask people, you know, how do you define health? realize, hmm, I got to define it in terms of something more and people will. either hesitate or say, well, it’s also, you know, mental well being and social well being, but then you don’t have like a, you don’t have a measuring gauge for that. So I say, well, you do have a measuring guide, which is that inner sense of vitality.

Todd: Mm hmm. Mm

Alan: physical health, vitality, emotional well being, [00:15:00] social connectivity, or now life purpose, they all produce A sense of higher vitality, interesting about the sense of purpose is it spills over to these other domains. When you have a strong sense of life purpose, you’re taking care of your health better. The data show that. One of the mechanisms by which people who have, because it’s a natural question, if these data are showing up, why? what’s going on.

Todd: hmm.

Alan: it, there’s not a whole lot of data, but there’s, it’s very suggestive data that when people are living with a high sense of life purpose, they have low cortisol levels, they have less inflammation. so there’s these kinds of indices, but what’s very clear is they have better health behaviors. tend to, you know, eat better, exercise more and, you know, take care of their health. The more proactive in using health resources. So what happens is these domains are highly interrelated, but I think that sense of life purpose is [00:16:00] right there in the center of driving many things in terms of your health. It’s as if, if you live with a better sense of life purpose, having better health is like a byproduct.

Todd: Yeah, yeah, I can see that it almost, I can almost sense that it makes you care more. Somehow you care about whatever it is that your purpose is, and taking care of your health is going to help you continue to serve that purpose, and so you naturally start spilling over into different areas.

Alan: Yes, I think so. You know, you, you, when you’re living with a sense of purpose, you see your life is more valuable. It’s more precious to you. So you want to stay healthy. You’re also more likely to be prioritizing long term goals in general. People are goal directed, tend to look more than just past the present, but also sense of life purpose buffers stress, for example, and improves mood. And these are factors which influence whether you’re going to eat or not eat, and how you take care of your [00:17:00] health, and your

Todd: Yes,

Alan: level,

Todd: yes, that makes sense.

Alan: All these areas are interrelated. That’s

Todd: Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I keep coming back to this um, thing that you said in one of the other episodes of like when, when you strengthen one area of life, you strengthen all areas of life. Uh, I think you mentioned, uh, uh, and so it’s, it’s really true, you know, just doing a little physical exercise can start improving well being and removing depression.

And we saw a lot of that. But here’s the other, another piece, just finding something that you can, you can do. that feels like it’s in your integrity to pursue and to be, uh, excited about, can improve your eating behavior, your desire to exercise, and everything in between. So, yes.

Alan: Exactly. Exactly.

Todd: Okay. So, um, what do you, what do you see as, uh, any ways that, uh, you can try to improve or enhance your ability to live with [00:18:00] a more of a purpose? Uh, do you, do you have any suggestions or experience in that area?

Alan: I have suggestions and experience.

Todd: Okay, great. Let’s hear it.

Alan: You live light, you, uh, you, you develop ideas. You better have ideas.

Todd: That’s for sure. Yes.

Alan: We all want to make sure, as I say, our ladder is up against the right wall. um, I call that the priority question. it’s a question we should be asking ourselves. a lot. you know, in young life, we, we definitely thinking about that. we get into, uh, it’s almost like a paradox. When you’re young, you have this sense of idealism and you’re open and you’re going to school and you know, you haven’t worked things out, but when you’re young, you don’t have, you know, the same life experience. You don’t have the same. wisdom you’ve accumulated over time. Uh, you’re more prone to social pressure and the expectations of your friends and people and your family around you. So you’re not as [00:19:00] self determined yet, but you’re making decisions often that are very, uh, transformative for the rest of your life.

Todd: Yeah. Um,

Alan: into accounting, I went into medicine, I went into law, right? You know, there

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: you know, your free time, you’re scrolling, you’re relaxing, and, you know, you don’t come back to say, hmm, let me reassess, you know, what, what my direction is. And then if you say, wait a second, maybe it’s a good idea having this priority consciousness. How often should I do it? Is it [00:20:00] a once a year thing? I mean, people do come around in terms of their, uh, birthday, you know, and there’s a New Year’s. Those are like two natural dates to kind of think about. Where am I going?

Todd: Right.

Alan: I think it should be a lot more frequently. Um, you know, you could make a case that at the end of each week, you should think about your week think about how did that fit into your goals. You should have a look. I’m a big advocate of having a mission statement.

Todd: Mhm.

Alan: uh, and, uh, all the great time management books talk about this. You know, it’s just a question of whether we take it seriously. But this is a very foundational goal. step of, um, you know, making sure you’re on track in terms of your sense of life purpose. So that’s one thing. The second thing is, um, uh, I think we might’ve talked about this on a prior podcast, uh, but just very briefly in terms of tuning fork moments.

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: So, you know, you know, using, [00:21:00] thinking in terms of your life, in terms of moments in your life where you felt, what I’m doing is really pleasurable, I’m enjoying it. And in fact, feeling like you’re in your zone, feeling that this fits you, feeling like time stops. You know, like I really enjoyed, like for me doing these podcasts or that, I mean, I, because there’s a part of me that, learned years ago, I like teaching. talking about things and and people often have to get me to stop talking about that.

You know, whatever I want to get into a teaching mode. You know,

Todd: Right,

Alan: do small talk. I’ll get into, uh, that’s, what I learned about myself, you know.

Todd: right?

Alan: You want to, but if you will do the work of thinking about that, anyone could stop now just say, anyone looking at this podcast, they could put it on pause and say, let me think about when were the moments in my life, my life course, when I was in college or whatever, where I felt in the zone, where things just stopped for me, write them down, look at them and see if there’s a [00:22:00] pattern. Often there’s a big clue there for you if you do that.

Todd: I love that. I love that. Because one of the things you mentioned about purpose here at the beginning of this is the sense of integrity. Like I can’t sometimes call it alignment with something inside is matching what’s outside. Like what I’m doing is matching what I’m wanting to do or what my interests actually are.

And, So finding moments where you say there’s like a tuning fork moment that we’re saying there’s an alignment right there in from outer to inner. So yeah.

Alan: Absolutely. so then there’s another one. This is a biggie.

Todd: Okay. What do you got?

Alan: You’ve read Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Todd: Sure.

Alan: Yeah. So I think it’s habit number two. He says, have the end in mind, have the end in mind. So he has an exercise and they’re very powerful in the beginning. He says, imagine you’re at your own funeral [00:23:00] and imagine you’re inviting at least four people there. A member of your family, a member of, um, of, uh, your friends, one of your friends, someone from work and someone from your community. So it’s at least four. imagine they’re not talking about you. And just imagine, close your eyes, what is it that you want them to say about you? Okay?

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alan: But it’s about being a great father, you know, someone who cared about the community, you know, things they did for other people. So it’s interesting that we have these goals when you think about it, you know, we’re thinking most of the time about to do goals, you know, I got to get this done and that done. But when you think about this exercise, when I reflected, I said, you know, these are all about character goals. [00:24:00] are all about that I become more patient, that I become more giving, that I become kinder, that I let things bounce off of me. There’s something about that that we want to accomplish about ourselves, but it’s so easy to go to sleep on that. So part of the, but the interesting thing about it is the accomplishment of these character goals is the goals. You know, when you talk about the half life of something, so you have a half life of physical pleasure. You know, I had a great meal yesterday. You know, I went to the beach yesterday. pleasure is almost described, almost in the past tense. You know, they don’t last long. It’s the pursuit of goals that gives us pleasure. And it’s the accomplishment of transforming ourselves into becoming something that we weren’t before. And so, doing this exercise of having the end in mind, actually, is very powerful. And I think if you do it, you get in touch with, perhaps, some character goals. [00:25:00] And then, you know, if you’re going to be, you know, purposeful about it, have to say, well, how am I going to get there? Maybe I do want to be a person who feels gratitude more often. then, now wait a

Todd: Mm.

Alan: in Steve Covey’s time matrix.

Things that are but not urgent. we tend to put those off. The trick is to identify these higher level goals about ourselves. bring it into the present. with gratitude, it’s about, you know, let me do a journaling for five minutes a day, you know, or if it’s, you know, being kind to other people, you know, developing an exercise around that, or being more patient, you know, developing an exercise around that.

So that’s, uh, the third big area.

Todd: Okay. That’s, that’s great. Yeah. Um, you know, especially in our world and maybe it’s always been this way that it’s so easy to get distracted with to do’s and with, um, all of [00:26:00] the polls from, um, Where we’re living. But this is like checking in. What is it that I’m here to do? Why am I here? What am I wanting to do?

What is my heart’s desire?

Alan: Yeah.

Todd: and connecting with that on a regular basis, and then using that to sort out the, the to-dos. Um, yeah, I think, I think you’re really onto something.

Alan: here’s the thing though about it. It’s both hard and easy. easy and hard, you know, I mean, we give lip service, for example, to but it’s really hard to do it day in, day out. on the flip side, you can say, wait a second, really? What’s hard to do about it is to just think about it because we, we put it off.

But if you decide you want to do it five minutes a day can make an enormous difference, an enormous difference. So then it isn’t really hard. It’s that sense of commitment to it. You know, I’ll use the. analogy with exercise, you know, getting, I find the hardest thing I have to do because I’m dealing with [00:27:00] mostly sedentary people in my work is to get them on that playing field of that five minutes a day. If I get them on and I get them consistent, then I can work with them. It’s that, you know, getting them on the field. That’s hard.

Todd: Yep. And you talked about that with exercise, just having the bar low enough that you can get over it and on a consistent basis, even one minute of exercise counts, you know, like, let’s, that’s better than none.

Alan: Yeah, I’m a big advocate for lower that bar, you know, and just get on the playing field for all the things we want to do. You know, that’s, that’s the hard part, getting on the playing field.

Todd: Love it. Okay. So, you know, speaking of that, what are some of the other obstacles that people face when they’re trying to kind of look at or begin implementing, uh, this idea of connecting with purpose in their lives. [00:28:00] Yes.

Alan: People need to do everything they can to be as objective as possible. So, in terms of your own self direction. So, finding that map maker, having that mentor, having that confidant. Someone who you can take your map to and show them what you What your life’s about making that effort is important. It’s just we pass over it too easily. Um, I think that one of the biggest problems is just lack self esteem. When people don’t feel good about themselves, they fear failure more. They’re less willing to try. So you have to look at yourself and see where you have those self doubts and work on it. So that’s a big area. second big obstacle is just financial pressure. Just, you know, it’s, you know, life is hard. And so when you look at that middle age, so when you’re young, I mentioned, you know, you don’t have as much experience, but you have the idealism. You have, you [00:29:00] open when you’re older, you hear the drum beats. What about those middle years? So, the middle years are tough, because you’re starting a career, you’re starting a family perhaps, you’re starting a business, you’re doing all these things, and by nature we’re caught up in the pressures of what we have to do. And if you have a lot of financial pressure, okay, growth goals sound great, character goals sound great, I gotta work on what I’m doing here. So that’s an obstacle. That’s an obstacle and the way you deal with that, if that’s true, because you, you deal with the financial pressures and it’s real, is to realize power of just a little bit of, because when you break it down to I’m going to do, it’s five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, then it’s never about financial pressure.

It’s just about your commitment. But that is a big obstacle. Clearly having of clear goals. Yes. is an obstacle for many people. A lot of people are very clear about their goals. [00:30:00] A lot of people I tend to look at the short term. I’m not used to looking at the long term. That’s where a mentor having a mapmaker becomes very important. There’s so many other individual obstacles, whether you procrastinate, you need to know that about yourself. Are you a perfectionist? That’s a big one

Todd: Mhm.

Alan: in our society. It’s something I’ve had to deal with in my own life. I’ve been a Person tends to dot the i’s cross the t’s and my work and so forth. And you know, you need to know that about yourself and work against that. Um, another big one I think is what I’d call humility. Um, you know, when you think about in life, you know, when I remember when I was about 40, I’d moved to New York from, Los Angeles. I’m originally from New York, but I’d been out at Cedars Sinai Medical Center for 10 years and felt it was time to return home. And I ended up working at the hospital I still work at now, now called Mount Sinai Morningside. It’s right across from Columbia University. lunchtime habit was to walk at the university, [00:31:00] nice campus, I’d walk around and I’d see the young kids and so forth. I remember this So well, when I was 40 saying, you know, thinking about, you know, things I could have done better in my life and I could, you know, wishing I was back in my twenties,

Todd: Mhm.

Alan: well, you know, was 40,

Todd: Right.

Alan: you wish I was 40 when you’re 60, you wish you were 50, you know,

Todd: Of course.

Alan: you look back because why?

Because you, you’ve grown in terms of your, your sense of knowledge and understanding. So what I say is there’s, there’s a pie of knowledge. what I know that I know. Okay. There’s what I know that I don’t know, and there’s the part where I don’t know what I don’t know,

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: and which is the largest part of that pie?

Todd: Sure.

Alan: You know, once you, you realize that, you say, wait a second, getting more information is valuable. Finding that map maker is, is terrific. You know, it’s like, uh. the, the smartest CEOs, they’re, [00:32:00] they’re the ones that are looking for the most information, you know? Uh, and often it’s, it’s hard to come by, right?

Because they are the CEO. People are maybe more inhibited to share with them, but they want to know what’s going on if they’re a smart CEO.

Todd: Yes.

Alan: of our own lives, you know, and we should seek to get as much input as we can. But this ties into other things. Are you willing to make yourself vulnerable, you know, and all those sorts of things, right,

Todd: Yeah. It’s like, it’s the putting yourself in the position of a student being, being a learner, um, and, and liking learning, even if you already have a lot of experience because, you know, there’s so much that you don’t know and that keeps that mind open so that, uh, you know, you can actually start discovering things.

So. But

Alan: Right.

Todd: think you know it all, then of course, uh, then that would be a barrier to having

Alan: Absolutely.

Todd: getting closer to what that purpose is.

Alan: That’s right. That’s why I [00:33:00] mentioned it. It’s a barrier. It’s a

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: Yeah.

Todd: Well, and I think it’s especially important based on what you were saying of how purpose changes over, over age and over time. And. You may think, Oh, yeah, I’ve got, I know my purpose is to, you know, make a certain amount of income or something to support my family and as a great purpose, and then it may morph and change and expand from there as, as you grow older.

And if you’re not open to that, you get stuck in being in just one sense of purpose, which is limiting.

Alan: And you’re going to face in life. You know, you’re going to, going to get older. Most people are going to develop some health conditions. Some people may get ill before their time. And then you’ve got these things. So I guess we really haven’t talked about it, but a sense of life purpose is also a resilience resource. when you have a stronger sense of [00:34:00] life purpose, you have more interests, it gives you resilience power to deal with the things in your, in your life when things don’t go as well. um, and I think that’s a really important thing,

Todd: Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see that. So, um, one kind of maybe objection that may come up with the idea of purpose is, um, kind of two extremes actually. One is when You get stuck and you don’t feel like you have one and then you feel like you should have one and you and you get, you can end up getting down because I don’t have what I wish I had.

Um, and it’s hard to find or any of those kinds of thoughts. The other extreme is getting too obsessed with the purpose almost to the point of like it could become frustrating You know, not, not the living purpose would be frustrating, but [00:35:00] trying to get to an end product or like getting attached to some kind of results or some kind of outcome.

Do you have any thoughts on either of those kinds of, um, uh, issues?

Alan: Yeah, it’s such an important question. I’m really glad you raised it. Um, there are these two extremes. and in that extreme, not sure I’d call it an extreme necessarily of, of not knowing your sense of life purpose. First of all, when you’re younger, it’s tougher. Uh, some people are just not as clear.

We talked about these barriers. You start to add them up, you know, uh, and one of them being not clear about your goals, another one being having self doubts or self esteem, uh, issues. So you have to get it, I think, at that end into little purpose before you get into big purpose.

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: doing those things like little optimism before big optimism. So it’s so important at that end of the spectrum to make yourself [00:36:00] vulnerable, to find that wiser person, that confidant, um, that you can open up to that. the entree to that. And to be self accepting that this is your stage. We

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: periods in life where we’re just not as clear. You know, so that self compassion is important at that stage.

You know, we’ve all been there. You know, we all, you know, um, or someone may have a clear sense of purpose and something happened in their life, they got a major illness and all of a sudden they don’t know what to do. So it can hit us at any age. Reaching out to other people, social support, social support, mentors, confidants.

These are the things that are the tools at that end of the spectrum.

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: Now the other end of the spectrum is also critically important. So people can get very absorbed their sense of life purpose. And [00:37:00] life demands of you, particularly modern life, that you know how to put limits on things.

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: this the radical build. I said there’s this nuance, or I think, I don’t know, I’m not sure nuance is even the right word. There’s this balance that we have to get between finding to do all the things we have to do. about the roles people have today. You know, you’ve got your job, maybe you have to keep up with new skills. You may have a family, you may have parents, you have financial goals, maybe investment goals. You got to take care of your health. You start adding all these things up. There’s a lot. if you aren’t deliberate in terms of trying to be in life balance, you may end up with life emergencies or being jack in the box very easily.

Todd: Yeah.

Alan: Now, when you have an absorbing life goal, sometimes it makes it hard to be in balance with those things.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. [00:38:00] Okay.

Alan: life, we do have to give up some of these things and say, I’m not going to spend much time with my friends, maybe even with my own family, because I have this great, great opportunity to have a breakthrough. So I call the radical build. you have to be very careful with it. You have to put limits around it. It’s got to be like Black Spark’s warning. Be careful because you might enjoy this so much you might forget to get back into life balance. So we are dealing with an issue here where it’s very profound for many people because I know many people, people anyway, who went into what I’d call chronic life build, radical build, and just didn’t live a balanced life. Uh, but you know, in old age, [00:39:00] your CV won’t keep you company. It’s, you know, did you develop, keep you up with your friends and family and build some of these character goals. Because when you do Steve Covey’s exercise, keeping the end in mind, you want to develop these other sides of yourself. No one said any of this was easy, you know, in life, no pain, no gain. But when you do the work, life becomes ever more enjoyable when you have that sense of balance and purpose. That’s, that’s a great life. That’s a great life.

Todd: Yeah, that’s really, really nuanced and really resonates with me and, you know, there’s great value in going deeply into one thing and there’s great value in staying balanced with all the different Uh, needs of life. Uh, and, and that’s not an easy task, uh, but just being aware of it and, and sometimes letting one win out over the other and then coming back to balance.

It’s a constant dance. Um, so

Alan: It’s a constant dance. It’s the dance [00:40:00] of life.

Todd: yeah.

Alan: all in it. You know,

Todd: Yes. Yes.

Alan: the unfortunate thing is we Live as human beings behind the social mask. You know, you ask your friend, how you doing? Great.

Todd: Yep.

Alan: Behind the scene, that might be a tornado, we, we don’t know what other people are going through.

People don’t share enough. That’s why it’s important to have good friends, confidence. But the more you’re, know, out there, cheerful person, you know, working on your own character goals, the more people want to be part of your life and you get to, that’s how you grow in wisdom.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, well, this has been excellent. I feel like we’ve really, uh, looked at some interesting ideas here with relation to purpose. And, um, I have to say in closing that, uh, Elaine Aaron, who, who first named this idea of highly sensitive people, um, she talks about that sometimes in her writings and [00:41:00] speeches about that for highly sensitive people, having a sense of purpose is especially valuable.

Um, I think it’s obviously important for everyone, but it’s nice to look at it here and to hold it in a gentle way where we’re like, yeah, I’m pursuing that, but I’m not getting ahead of my own evolution and trying to be more than I am having the humility to say, okay, my purpose right now is, is just to.

Find my purpose or just my purpose is to take care of, uh, take care of the, the immediate thing that’s in front of me. And so it can start really small and then grow, uh, from there.

Alan: Well

Todd: I heard, uh, sorry, I heard an interview of you at some point when I was first researching talking to you about a study, uh, in a nursing home with taking care of a plant.

Do you, can you, uh, just share that one?

Alan: yeah, yeah. That was a study done by Judy [00:42:00] Rodin and Ellen Langer, very famous psychologists in the academic space. Tremendous study years ago. They went into a nursing home, and they did a randomized control study, which is really the highest evidence of research, and you could put this in that evidence about what’s, how’s this a health domain.

What they did is they randomized these elder home people receive a plant. All of them

Todd: Okay.

Alan: them then, I think, uh, it was

Todd: Hello, [00:43:00] everyone. You

Alan: a,

Todd: Silence.

Alan: earlier mortality than the group that reported feeling useful. So those are other anecdotes, if you will, more than anecdotes, scientific evidence of the importance of life purpose.

Todd: Yeah. Okay. It’s really good. And, and what strikes me about that study in the nursing home is how, what a small [00:44:00] purpose it may be. You’re right. It’s just a watering a plant doesn’t seem like anything earth shattering or, or major, but just having some small thing. That that you can take care of or that is that gives a little bit of purpose and meaning can make such a huge difference.

Um, so I think leaving on that note of it doesn’t have to be, uh, it doesn’t have to be huge and it doesn’t have to be, uh, there’s not a reason to. Feel bad if you don’t have this super clear life purpose. Um, there’s purposes all around that can make a big difference

Alan: Yes, absolutely. A hundred percent.

Todd: Cool. Well, thank you for your time again. It’s always a pleasure to explore the universe of health and really Gain from your knowledge. So thank you for being here

Alan: Thank you for having me. It’s been my pleasure.