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Dr. Cobin Solberg hosts Dr. Jordan Grumet, author of the upcoming book The Purpose Code, which builds on insights from his first book, Taking Stock. Together, they unravel the mystery of purpose—why it’s essential for a meaningful life and how many of us approach it all wrong. Dr. Grumet explains the concepts of "Big P Purpose" and "Little P Purpose," revealing why chasing grand goals often leads to frustration while embracing small, fulfilling actions creates joy.
Drawing from his profound experiences with end-of-life patients, Dr. Grumet shares how understanding purpose can transform not only your life but also the legacy you pass on to future generations. They also explore what truly lights us up and how to break free from societal pressures to find genuine fulfillment.
Bio
Dr. Jordan Grumet is a hospice physician, podcaster, and author. Since 2018, he has hosted the Earn and Invest podcast, where he explores topics at the intersection of personal finance and purposeful living. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Taking Stock, which reflects on the lessons he learned from conversations with patients at the end of their lives. His upcoming book, The Purpose Code, builds on these insights, offering a fresh perspective on understanding and cultivating purpose in everyday life. Dr. Grumet’s work bridges his medical experience with practical guidance for achieving financial independence and living with intention.
Website & Socials:
https://jordangrumet.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-grumet-38a506179/
https://www.youtube.com/@theearninvestpodcast4351
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You can also be a guest on our show? Please email me at brad@physiciansguidetodoctoring.com to connect or visit www.physiciansguidetodoctoring.com to learn more about the show!
Socials:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, welcome. I'm Coben Solberg. I'm an anesthesiologist and the principal financial planner at Greeley Wealth Management, and I am really excited for our guest today. Today, I welcome Dr. Jordan Grumet, who is a hospice physician . He's been the host since 2018 of Earn and Invest, which is a phenomenal podcast.
(00:01):
They could tell me how to hit financial independence. They could tell me how to build these successful businesses, but often I would ask them about what enough look like in their life or why they were working so hard to make so much money and I would get blank stares. And so the idea behind taking stock my first book, was to help.
One is. That tons of studies show that purpose is associated with health, longevity, and happiness. Tons and tons of studies, very clearly proven. On the other hand, other studies show that up to 91 percent of people at least at one point in their life, get what's called purpose anxiety. This idea that finding their purpose causes them anxiety, depression, and frustration.
We teach people in the United States, if you can think it, you can build it. And so a lot of us go for Big Audacious Purpose. This I want to be a billionaire. I want to cure cancer. I want to do something huge. The problem is most of us don't have agency to actually do those things. We're not the right person at the right time saying the right things and having a lot of luck and the right genetics, right?
I love the way that you described little P purpose. You had this sentence where you talk about even if you don't create the next Apple or Google, and like you said, it takes a lot of luck to get to those points, if you're focused on that process, you're going to live a fascinating and interesting, a fun life.
And the reason is we spend 95 to 98 percent of our time in the process and only one or 2 percent of our time actually achieving big goals. The rest of our time is in the nitty gritty of living. And so you want to really enjoy that. We both come from, a background in medicine and I'll talk about some of the things I really enjoyed about your journey where you recognize medicine wasn't your primary home.
So let me explain what I mean by that. Meaning. Is our cognitive understanding of our past, and it's all about thoughts. It's the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And really, meaning is a journey to enough. ~And so let me explain this. ~People who are happy tend to have a good sense of meaning and they tell themselves a heroic story about their past.
And so they look at the trauma of their past and they say, I was a victim. So I never could accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. And so they tend to tell themselves they never were able to become enough and they weren't enough on their own. And so when they look at the present and future, they see a world where they'll continue being a victim. That's meaning, and it's about your past and thinking. Purpose is about your present and future, and it's about action. And so purpose is just the activities we involve ourselves in that are a good use of our time, that light us up, that are exciting. So here's the problem with a lot of doctors, goal setters, and achievers.
So I think that's one answer. Here's the other answer that I get very clear with people who are doing well, who've achieved a lot and have a lot of money, but they feel like they have to do more. So what I always tell people is, look, I want you to win the game and winning the game looks like this. We're born one day and we die another, and we have no idea how much time is going to be in between those two days, but it's pretty much set, right?
The problem is if you're stuck with goals and achievements, a lot of times you find yourself doing things you don't love. In fact, even doing things you loathe. To reach that goal, and maybe you find yourself really happy for the day, week, or month where you're celebrating that goal, but the next thing you know, you're back to doing things you don't like to reach the next big goal.
Playing Legos and reading books or going on a mountain bike ride or, any of these countless things that actually Bring joy and happiness into my life. Like it doesn't have to be suffering I loved how you started this book Jordan you started with the story of Julia Child and how she transitioned out, from her role in the State Department It started to the Julia Child that we know as this, celebrated author and chef and, what immediately jumps out from that story and everything I've seen from Julia Child is how much joy she lived her life. It resonated with me and I wonder if are those, that what you're supposed to be looking for? Like when you're doing these things that light you up, is that what you're looking for and doing more of that? Amen. Look at Julia Child, right? She failed her first test at the court in blue. She took 10 years to write her most famous cookbook. If she didn't love what she was doing while she was doing it, she would have burned out just like a lot of doctors are burning out. And so that's, what's so exciting about her story is she just loved what she was doing.
Julia Child's did not set out to change the world and neither do you. But if you do things that light you up, that bring you joy, you're most likely going to anyway. Maybe you'll make money, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll put something out into the world that changes people's lives, maybe you won't. But the effect locally you have on people, you'll end up creating communities and making connections with people because they will see you doing something that lights you up.
Instead of being action oriented and taking steps and knowing we're going to fail and knowing we're going to trip and knowing we're going to fall on our face. And let me add to that. That is a meaning problem.
So I do appreciate you clarifying that that really helps. And I think that gives people. Step in and take action. Another thing that you talk a lot about is how it's so easy to compare our purpose to someone else's purpose and how dangerous that can be. And I've often said, comparison is terrible, whether it's how much you're making, how much you're working, your trips, whatever.
Let's also look at marketers who are going to show you advertisements, videos, movies, TV commercials, that are all these images of people who are living idealized lives, better lives than you. And again, they're trying to convince you. If you just co opt a version of purpose, that's big purpose.
And so there's a lot of pressure to co opt other people's version of especially big P purpose. But the problem is we find ourselves doing all sorts of stuff we don't love doing in order to reach this big P purpose. And so if we're lucky enough to reach it, we're not fulfilled because it was someone else's version of purpose instead of our own.
So it's not perfect, but we got to start thinking about what feels purposeful to us and everyone is different. Like I love baseball cards. I loved baseball cards when I was a little kid. And so I could build a life of purpose around baseball cards, but that would be boring maybe to someone like you who likes playing tennis or who likes horse riding or who likes creating mathematical models for betting at the track or whatever you like doing.
So my father died when I was seven and he was an oncologist a cancer doctor and I tried to co opt his purpose I decided everything would be fine. As long as I became a doctor could step back into his footsteps, into his shoes and do the good work he was doing. And guess what? I spent a lifetime trying to do that.
But what stuck out to me was your description of where you like medicine, didn't feel like your people. Like you mentioned, you weren't hanging out with other doctors. almost like you didn't even want to tell people that you were a physician. Can you talk to us a little bit more about That journey to finding yourself and discovering these new paths for you, you said you gave yourself permission, but I'm sure it didn't just happen overnight.
And I read his book and it taught me all about finances. And I had that aha moment where looked at my own finances and said, I've been pretty lucky. My parents modeled great financial behavior. I actually have enough money. I could step away from this thing. That's no longer fitting me. I could stop being a doctor, but here was the problem.
So this took years. In the meantime, during those years, I could start to generally And gently think about what I wanted to fill up my free time with. So when I went from working 60 hours a week to working 10 hours a week, that gave me 50 hours to play with. And so I started thinking what really lights me up.
It's not me for sure who are like, hell, yeah, I'm just going to jump. My sense is a lot of the people that I work with other physicians are not those people, right? They want to have a plan. So your journey actually is a nice model for that because slowly subtracting. And building up other sorts of meaning and purpose before you leave medicine entirely.
(00:22):
And I think if you can maintain that, that's where the magic is. You're going to get better. If you're looking again at your life in that calendar, Regardless of which way you do this, jump head first or do it slowly, that calendar is going to continue getting better. And that's my goal for you. I don't care how you get there, but I want more things you love and less things you loathe.
Now, whether you do that on your own by doing a deep dive on the internet or whether you have a coach or therapist help you through that is up to you. But what narrative therapy is we identify the major narratives in our life, the major traumatic events in our life. And we go back and separate ourselves from the trauma and realize pretty much that maybe a bad thing happened to us, but we were not a bad person.
Yeah, that's one thing that definitely stood out in the book how powerful and important that meaning piece is. And I think my sense is that's why a lot of people struggle. Like you said, it's much easier. To try and achieve your way out of the lack of meaning, right? Instead of slowing down and doing that work of knowing that you're enough.
My wife's a PhD. She's away today teaching. And we try and tell our son how important these parts of our lives are for us, and yet we also want to give him as much time and attention as we're able to as well. Like how do you navigate that? Because it's, I think especially as a physician, we're so used to taking care of other people, and we get rewarded for it.
You haven't modeled that what you've modeled is that your children are supposed to be your purpose. But what happens if they don't want children? What happens if they biologically can't have children? What happens when they have children, then the children grow up and move away. You haven't modeled any generational growth.
And then their kids are not going to feed their own souls either. And we're actually creating generational trauma. We want to create generational growth. We want to let those kids know, do things that light you up because that's the pathway to a happy life. I love that. I think understanding that model and that behavior for so many of the different things that we're trying to teach them. if there's anything that I know about my three year old is, it does not matter what I say one bit. He picks up on the way that I talk to my wife. He picks up on the way I talk to him and he picks up on my actions more than anything else. And it's sobering and humbling if nothing else. A lot great stuff in your book, Jordan. What else would you like people to walk away? From your book, what else do you want to let people to know? So the main message here is that purpose is not some big ephemeral thing. It's actually small and palpable and tactile and abundant.
Purpose is like that pill. Maybe it's not 30%, but you can live longer, healthier and happier with a good dose of purpose in your life. And it's not this intangible far away thing. It's something that all of us can do. Isn't it easier when it's this big ephemeral thing? Cause then we don't have to work on it.
So that's why it's doing that work is because ultimately you probably want something different if you're feeling disconnected today. So Jordan, tell people where they can find you. Easiest places to go to jordangrumet. com. That's J O R D A N G R U M E T. com. There, you can see links to both of my books, Taking Stock and The Purpose Code, as well as other links to almost everywhere I create content.
And , like I said, there's little workbooks throughout. So I. Cannot recommend this book enough. It's a fantastic book. So to anyone listening today, go out and pre order it today. Thank you, Coben. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you so much for being here today, Jordan. And I look forward to talking to you in the future.
All right, welcome. I'm Coben Solberg. I'm an anesthesiologist and the principal financial planner at Greeley Wealth Management, and I am really excited for our guest today. Today, I welcome Dr. Jordan Grumet, who is a hospice physician . He's been the host since 2018 of Earn and Invest, which is a phenomenal podcast.
(00:01):
They could tell me how to hit financial independence. They could tell me how to build these successful businesses, but often I would ask them about what enough look like in their life or why they were working so hard to make so much money and I would get blank stares. And so the idea behind taking stock my first book, was to help.
One is. That tons of studies show that purpose is associated with health, longevity, and happiness. Tons and tons of studies, very clearly proven. On the other hand, other studies show that up to 91 percent of people at least at one point in their life, get what's called purpose anxiety. This idea that finding their purpose causes them anxiety, depression, and frustration.
We teach people in the United States, if you can think it, you can build it. And so a lot of us go for Big Audacious Purpose. This I want to be a billionaire. I want to cure cancer. I want to do something huge. The problem is most of us don't have agency to actually do those things. We're not the right person at the right time saying the right things and having a lot of luck and the right genetics, right?
I love the way that you described little P purpose. You had this sentence where you talk about even if you don't create the next Apple or Google, and like you said, it takes a lot of luck to get to those points, if you're focused on that process, you're going to live a fascinating and interesting, a fun life.
And the reason is we spend 95 to 98 percent of our time in the process and only one or 2 percent of our time actually achieving big goals. The rest of our time is in the nitty gritty of living. And so you want to really enjoy that. We both come from, a background in medicine and I'll talk about some of the things I really enjoyed about your journey where you recognize medicine wasn't your primary home.
So let me explain what I mean by that. Meaning. Is our cognitive understanding of our past, and it's all about thoughts. It's the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And really, meaning is a journey to enough. ~And so let me explain this. ~People who are happy tend to have a good sense of meaning and they tell themselves a heroic story about their past.
And so they look at the trauma of their past and they say, I was a victim. So I never could accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. And so they tend to tell themselves they never were able to become enough and they weren't enough on their own. And so when they look at the present and future, they see a world where they'll continue being a victim. That's meaning, and it's about your past and thinking. Purpose is about your present and future, and it's about action. And so purpose is just the activities we involve ourselves in that are a good use of our time, that light us up, that are exciting. So here's the problem with a lot of doctors, goal setters, and achievers.
So I think that's one answer. Here's the other answer that I get very clear with people who are doing well, who've achieved a lot and have a lot of money, but they feel like they have to do more. So what I always tell people is, look, I want you to win the game and winning the game looks like this. We're born one day and we die another, and we have no idea how much time is going to be in between those two days, but it's pretty much set, right?
The problem is if you're stuck with goals and achievements, a lot of times you find yourself doing things you don't love. In fact, even doing things you loathe. To reach that goal, and maybe you find yourself really happy for the day, week, or month where you're celebrating that goal, but the next thing you know, you're back to doing things you don't like to reach the next big goal.
Playing Legos and reading books or going on a mountain bike ride or, any of these countless things that actually Bring joy and happiness into my life. Like it doesn't have to be suffering I loved how you started this book Jordan you started with the story of Julia Child and how she transitioned out, from her role in the State Department It started to the Julia Child that we know as this, celebrated author and chef and, what immediately jumps out from that story and everything I've seen from Julia Child is how much joy she lived her life. It resonated with me and I wonder if are those, that what you're supposed to be looking for? Like when you're doing these things that light you up, is that what you're looking for and doing more of that? Amen. Look at Julia Child, right? She failed her first test at the court in blue. She took 10 years to write her most famous cookbook. If she didn't love what she was doing while she was doing it, she would have burned out just like a lot of doctors are burning out. And so that's, what's so exciting about her story is she just loved what she was doing.
Julia Child's did not set out to change the world and neither do you. But if you do things that light you up, that bring you joy, you're most likely going to anyway. Maybe you'll make money, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll put something out into the world that changes people's lives, maybe you won't. But the effect locally you have on people, you'll end up creating communities and making connections with people because they will see you doing something that lights you up.
Instead of being action oriented and taking steps and knowing we're going to fail and knowing we're going to trip and knowing we're going to fall on our face. And let me add to that. That is a meaning problem.
So I do appreciate you clarifying that that really helps. And I think that gives people. Step in and take action. Another thing that you talk a lot about is how it's so easy to compare our purpose to someone else's purpose and how dangerous that can be. And I've often said, comparison is terrible, whether it's how much you're making, how much you're working, your trips, whatever.
Let's also look at marketers who are going to show you advertisements, videos, movies, TV commercials, that are all these images of people who are living idealized lives, better lives than you. And again, they're trying to convince you. If you just co opt a version of purpose, that's big purpose.
And so there's a lot of pressure to co opt other people's version of especially big P purpose. But the problem is we find ourselves doing all sorts of stuff we don't love doing in order to reach this big P purpose. And so if we're lucky enough to reach it, we're not fulfilled because it was someone else's version of purpose instead of our own.
So it's not perfect, but we got to start thinking about what feels purposeful to us and everyone is different. Like I love baseball cards. I loved baseball cards when I was a little kid. And so I could build a life of purpose around baseball cards, but that would be boring maybe to someone like you who likes playing tennis or who likes horse riding or who likes creating mathematical models for betting at the track or whatever you like doing.
So my father died when I was seven and he was an oncologist a cancer doctor and I tried to co opt his purpose I decided everything would be fine. As long as I became a doctor could step back into his footsteps, into his shoes and do the good work he was doing. And guess what? I spent a lifetime trying to do that.
But what stuck out to me was your description of where you like medicine, didn't feel like your people. Like you mentioned, you weren't hanging out with other doctors. almost like you didn't even want to tell people that you were a physician. Can you talk to us a little bit more about That journey to finding yourself and discovering these new paths for you, you said you gave yourself permission, but I'm sure it didn't just happen overnight.
And I read his book and it taught me all about finances. And I had that aha moment where looked at my own finances and said, I've been pretty lucky. My parents modeled great financial behavior. I actually have enough money. I could step away from this thing. That's no longer fitting me. I could stop being a doctor, but here was the problem.
So this took years. In the meantime, during those years, I could start to generally And gently think about what I wanted to fill up my free time with. So when I went from working 60 hours a week to working 10 hours a week, that gave me 50 hours to play with. And so I started thinking what really lights me up.
It's not me for sure who are like, hell, yeah, I'm just going to jump. My sense is a lot of the people that I work with other physicians are not those people, right? They want to have a plan. So your journey actually is a nice model for that because slowly subtracting. And building up other sorts of meaning and purpose before you leave medicine entirely.
(00:22):
And I think if you can maintain that, that's where the magic is. You're going to get better. If you're looking again at your life in that calendar, Regardless of which way you do this, jump head first or do it slowly, that calendar is going to continue getting better. And that's my goal for you. I don't care how you get there, but I want more things you love and less things you loathe.
Now, whether you do that on your own by doing a deep dive on the internet or whether you have a coach or therapist help you through that is up to you. But what narrative therapy is we identify the major narratives in our life, the major traumatic events in our life. And we go back and separate ourselves from the trauma and realize pretty much that maybe a bad thing happened to us, but we were not a bad person.
Yeah, that's one thing that definitely stood out in the book how powerful and important that meaning piece is. And I think my sense is that's why a lot of people struggle. Like you said, it's much easier. To try and achieve your way out of the lack of meaning, right? Instead of slowing down and doing that work of knowing that you're enough.
My wife's a PhD. She's away today teaching. And we try and tell our son how important these parts of our lives are for us, and yet we also want to give him as much time and attention as we're able to as well. Like how do you navigate that? Because it's, I think especially as a physician, we're so used to taking care of other people, and we get rewarded for it.
You haven't modeled that what you've modeled is that your children are supposed to be your purpose. But what happens if they don't want children? What happens if they biologically can't have children? What happens when they have children, then the children grow up and move away. You haven't modeled any generational growth.
And then their kids are not going to feed their own souls either. And we're actually creating generational trauma. We want to create generational growth. We want to let those kids know, do things that light you up because that's the pathway to a happy life. I love that. I think understanding that model and that behavior for so many of the different things that we're trying to teach them. if there's anything that I know about my three year old is, it does not matter what I say one bit. He picks up on the way that I talk to my wife. He picks up on the way I talk to him and he picks up on my actions more than anything else. And it's sobering and humbling if nothing else. A lot great stuff in your book, Jordan. What else would you like people to walk away? From your book, what else do you want to let people to know? So the main message here is that purpose is not some big ephemeral thing. It's actually small and palpable and tactile and abundant.
Purpose is like that pill. Maybe it's not 30%, but you can live longer, healthier and happier with a good dose of purpose in your life. And it's not this intangible far away thing. It's something that all of us can do. Isn't it easier when it's this big ephemeral thing? Cause then we don't have to work on it.
So that's why it's doing that work is because ultimately you probably want something different if you're feeling disconnected today. So Jordan, tell people where they can find you. Easiest places to go to jordangrumet. com. That's J O R D A N G R U M E T. com. There, you can see links to both of my books, Taking Stock and The Purpose Code, as well as other links to almost everywhere I create content.
And , like I said, there's little workbooks throughout. So I. Cannot recommend this book enough. It's a fantastic book. So to anyone listening today, go out and pre order it today. Thank you, Coben. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you so much for being here today, Jordan. And I look forward to talking to you in the future.
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