264. How to Live the Most Purposeful Year of Your Life

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
But at some point you will die. But what will
determine if you die with a smile on your face
or not is what you gave your life to. Charlie
gave his life in an instant, the rest of us
are going to give our life over decades. If you
don't live for something that you'd be willing to die for,
you will die sad, alone, depressed, wishing you had done
it differently. I want to die victoriously, and the way
that you're going to die victoriously is that you gave

(00:24):
your life to something that was more valuable than you.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
That's so impossible. Let me tell you what I believe.
What's your weakness is not your technique. Don't think you
know you the Impossible Life Podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
I mean you're sitting on a winning lot of.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Seconds, an idea that is fully formed, fully understood, that sticks.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
This is the Impossible Life Podcast because Nick and I
are attempting to live impossible lives. What we know is
that nothing is impossible. So instead of using impossible as
an excuse to not try, we'll use the pursuit of
impossible as an accelerant for greatness. If something's never been
done before, that just means it's unexplored. If they tell

(01:13):
you it's too hard, it's just waiting to be simplified.
Impossible as a default label used by uncourageous people unwilling
to take a risk. The real truth is this The
solution to any impossible task starts with this question, if
I had to what would it take? What would it take?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Welcome to another episode of the Impossible Life podcast. I'm
your co host, Nick Surface, and I'm sitting across from
a man who treats goals like enemy strongholds. Identify close
distance and eliminate. That's right, Friends the phone. Garrett Unkleback,
a man who has been referred to as the Lord's
heat seeking missile.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
We had a rule of okay combat in the military,
and it was aggressive action or what we called overwhelming violence.
It was if you shoot at me, I'm not going
to shot back. I'm go and drop a bomb on you.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
So, in relation to the goals, why would I close
the distance? If you have a stronghold, you know what
you do to strongholds, drop bombs on them, right, Strongholds
get eliminated very quickly.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
All right, Well, I mean closing the distance could be
the actual fire and of the missile. What you're saying
is that my my my intro was not no precisely accurate.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I'm just I'm not even gonna start with a ground approach.
I'm just gonna just gonna mow have you.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah, it's funny because I remember the first time you
told me about that, I was like, man, that seems
really harsh. And then I realized that all the action
movies where they pull a gun out and have a
five minute conversation or like I remember you just said,
You're like, how do I know that the guy with
the knife doesn't also have a gun, or how do
I know the guy with the gun doesn't also have
like an RPG. And the truth is you don't. But
in the movies, it's like they pull their gun out
and then maybe they'll cock it.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Out a lot, so there's a lot less story in reality. Exactly,
he turned towards as he was turning towards me shot, Yeah, yeah,
exact movie's over.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
I thought what was a five minute scene in the
movie is like a second and a half scene in reality.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
That's so disappointed, Like, dude, that's so disappointing for people
who don't actually know because ever since then, I've realized, like, dude,
the moment you pull a gun out, like if someone
shoots you, you got what you deserved because like you, basically
you showing it is saying I intend to use this
to somebody who's trained. Yeah, like people that just watch movies.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
I'm sorry, I'm not the terminator, and I can wait
until I'm my my supercomputer brain is examining your trigger.
And you know, when you're three and a half pounds
of pull in to a four pound trigger, Yeah, dude,
you know, put a laser beam through your forehead. I'm sorry,
I'm not that calculated.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, yeah, you're calculated, just in a different way.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
My I can't do that. So what I do have
to do is when you point a weapon at me,
that means you get a limit or begin.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
To even reach for it. That's whatever the elimination process
has begun.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
I'm not going to give you the opportunity.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Anyways, I just thought that was a fun lesson to learn.
I am teaching that to my kids as well, because
you know they love. Elijah in particular, is really enjoying
handling fake weapons right now. He's learning not to point
nerve guns and people's eyes and it's good. All right.
So today's gee, man, I love this episode man a lot.
I feel like I love all our episodes and it's
because I do. But how to live the most purposeful
year of your life? Man, this is something I'm deeply

(04:21):
passionate about because I look at like my progressive years
that we've done on The Impossible Life, and they've just
like every year in my life just keeps getting better.
And I really mean that.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
And understand the title here, it's how to live the
most purposeful year of your life, not how to live
your purpose next year. Right, There's a difference, very big difference. Yeah,
and we're going to get into that.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
So today we're literally gonna just take you through exactly
what we said, how to live a year that when
you're done, you're going, oh man, like it felt like
three years and I and every day was just like
that today matters feeling. And you said something Garrett once
that I absolutely loved. The first time I heard you
say that. You talked about potential in relation to video games,
and I remember like you were saying it to other

(05:05):
people when I was sat there, and I was like, man,
this is so good and like I've just I've remembered
it because it was such a good picture for understanding
your life some of.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
My basic analogies. It works great on younger audiences and
on audiences that play video games, which I would guess
probably only half of our audience has ever played a
video game.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
No, dude, I think way more than that has you think, Dude,
A bunch of guys like our audience like that surprising percent,
I know, but I don't think ninety two percent of
men play video games. I'm not saying now, I'm saying
they have played a video that Well.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Anyways, anyway, the analogy, well, I tell people, why wouldn't
you live your life the way that you've played a
video game? Right? If you play a role playing game,
like you begin and you get this character and the
entire like, all you can think about is, for one,
there's a purpose from my character, right, I know there's
an end that I'm supposed to get to. There's a

(05:54):
final boss that I have to defeat, and I'm not
ready for it now. So I'm going to have to
go through lots of training and preparation to get my
character ready for the because I know there's a story
that's been written for me. You believe about the character
that the character will be capable of but is not
yet capable of defeating the final boss. And so what
I have to do today is train and develop my character.

(06:15):
And every you know, every time you log in and
play one of those games, you're just sinking, where's the
where's the thing that's going to grow me the most?
Like where where can I get new gear? Where can
I learn new skills? Where can I get information that
helps lead? Because you don't even know how to You know,
when you first play these games, you don't even know
how to get to the final boss. Sometimes you don't
even know who he is, right, so you're you're either
where can I get gear? Where can I develop skills

(06:37):
and make my character better? Or where can I learn
more about my story? And you spend all of your
time on these activities, And there's in video games, there's
also side quests that you know they benefit you, like
there's growth and skills that come from those because you
you have to do and like the really hard RPGs,
you have to do some side quest to make sure
you're strong enough for the main quest. But what I

(06:59):
the way that I see a lot of people live
their lives is that they don't pursue the main storyline.
They instead of spending all their time developing their skills,
they think about what would be like, what would be
the most fun for my character?

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, I really like that minigame?

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah okay, yeah, would be exactly what it'd be like,
Like you log into us. A lot of the big
story games have like some great mini games in them,
and all you ever did was play the minigame, or
you do some of the side quests. And the differences
in reality and in the world that we live in,
a lot of the side quest you know, in a
video game, the side quests are meant to help develop you.
They're not a distraction. They don't contribute to the main quest,

(07:36):
but they give you resources to help along the main quest.
In the reality that we live in, a lot of
the side quests are actually a distraction and meant to
take you away from the main quest. And people will
spend all of their lives on a side quest or
on a minigame, and they don't use all of their time, effort,
and resources to make their character better. So I would

(07:58):
lead with this analogy and then just say to you know,
some young men, why don't you live your life the
way that you play a video game? Yeah, and there's
not no one has a good answer for that, because
the answer is you should. You should live your life
exactly the way you play video game, which is I'm
going to log in and I'm going to train and
I'm going to live. I'm going to push my character
to his most uncomfortable limits. I actually really enjoy making

(08:19):
my character uncomfortable. Let's get him to like you know,
fully depleted man of one HP. But we won. We
did it because like that was the hardest test that
we could have possibly passed, which means maximum benefit for
my growth. And I'm gonna live knowing that there is
something great that I'm supposed to do, and I'm going
to keep pushing forward knowing that I'm gonna get there
and develop myself as much as I can along the way.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah. And the question would also be, like, if you're
that video game character, like what do you think your
character should do? Because like you're saying you would develop them, well,
you know you can log in. I mean if you
said RPG, which is role playing games for those of
you that aren't actually video game players. You typically when
you select your character, they always have some natural strength.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
There's eight to twelve options of like, hey, any of
you can beat the game with any of these characters.
Which one you want to play?

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah? I mean you do this when you drive. If
you go to like Dave and Busters or whatever your
local kind of video game spot is, and you play
like a race car, you select your car and they're like,
this one has better handling, this one has more power
but not as much handling, and like this one's like
you you always have something, And so we all get
this in a video game selection, like oh, I'll take
this vehicle because I want to play this way. But
we don't think about our acceleration, right, Well, yeah, but

(09:26):
we don't think. We don't think that way about ourselves
in life. And that's what I think is. So when
you start, if you zoom out and you go, okay,
I'm a video game player, what what should my character
be doing and what should I be doing to maximize.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Shout out to the episode called Winning Philosophy, Oh man,
where we're Because the truth is we didn't get to
select our car. We're given a car exactly right, And
so you know, if you got the max acceleration car,
You're going to play the game one way. If you
got the best handling car, you're going to play the
game another way. If you got the car with the
most like grip, meaning like you don't have to drive straight,

(09:57):
you can drive through the mud and you're still gonna
get good track. Yeah, you learn you play the game
a different way. And winning philosophy. That episode is really
about understanding, like what are the gifts that you have?
Why do you win? Right, the car that's the fastest accelerator,
it says like I win because like I take off,
I get ahead of everyone, and I try to stay ahead.
That's the winning philosophy of that car. Right, You've got

(10:19):
to know what your winning philosophy is and that a
lot of that's based upon your your mindset, but you're
a lot of some of your mindset comes from your
natural gifting.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
I'd like to revisit that one, gee, just to put
a pin in that one, because it is a good one.
I've been talking to people about that recently. It's something
that I've actually cracked. I thought I knew what mine was,
and I had a reassessment recently and I was like, now,
I know what my.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Natal was, so that alone is reason to revisit it.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
I agree. Okay, So I mean you talked I think
what's so So going back to what you said about
the video game character. I remember when I heard you said,
I was like, oh man, And then when you start
thinking about like the side quest and you never actually
got to the main mission. Dude, I hope that like
that eats at you, the way that like the thought
of doing that of I spent my whole life just
doing like little fun things but never actually completing the

(11:03):
mission that I was on. Like, Okay, if it's just
a video game and the video game is solely there
for your enjoyment, great, But guess what God can give
you your life solely for your enjoyment. Like, we're not,
like you said, We're not the ones that get de
picked our character. God's the one who did.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Here's the other element that exists in our game that
doesn't really exist in the other game is that there's
a clock. Yeah, the clock running the whole time that
you can't see that the game is going to be
over at some point.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Man. Man, Okay, all right, so don't waste your time,
don't waste your time, so the question naturally becomes like,
what's the mission you're on? And I think that that's
a question that eats a lot of people because the
number one question we get all the time is how
to find your purpose? Right, It's literally what people get
in touch. I haven't told you this, and I saved
it for the podcast who you would love this? So
hearing this now for the first time, Yeah, because we

(11:47):
get asked about purpose so much. If you go into
I said this to some people reason I can't remember where,
but if you ever want to find an episode on
something for us, whether you use this to listen to
our podcast or not, if you go to the Spotify
app on your phone once you go into the show,
can just if you pull down on your phone to
scroll so that you can see the very top, suddenly
it has a search the show option and so you
can look up by keyword. So I looked up purpose

(12:08):
the other day to give I think it was when
we were doing a podcast. Actually it was the last
podcast we were on. I was giving people episodes to
go back, and I realized how much we talk about
purpose because it is the number one question we ask.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
It's what matters most.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
But we're getting to a growth size Praise the Lord
where we're starting to get a lot of people that
reach out and try and sell us stuff. And so
this guy reached out and tried to sell us some
SEO for our podcast and it was actually it was
really well done email. I know a bit bigger too
about SEO, so he wasn't talking foreign language to me.
And what's so funny is I think how this was
designed to go was it goes like, hey, here's all

(12:40):
the things that you're ranking for. Here. You know, if
this isn't what you actually want to rank for, we
can help you. Well, the number one thing we ranked
for was purpose and I was like, boom done. I
was like, so his email like, we're gonna ever, We're
not gonna work with this guy simply because it's already
going exactly we're ranking on what we want to rank for,
which is purpose.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Well that's funny too, because most like they have to
do SEO work, yeah, because their message doesn't line up
with their identity, right, what we are exactly like we
talk about exactly what we want to be and exactly
what we say, Yeah, what we say that we are
like that if I could pick a number one SEO
rank for us, it would be purpose.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Well that's what we said from the beginnings, like we
because well, and the reason we say that is because
people ask us about it, and we live very purseful lives.
And I've got to you know you, I've learned so
much about it from you, Like I mean, i'd be
stupid for me to try and pretend like it wasn't
the case, because you can just go back and listen
to the podcast and find that and you can see
all the things. But it's also been like, when God
puts you together for a reason, like he has with us,

(13:39):
You're going to naturally bring what God's gifted you with.
So I've brought some of the unique glory of God
that I carry to things. You brought something that was
way further developed than down the road, and so one
on one equals three. It's God math, right, it's synergy.
And so I hate using the term synergy. I'm actually
mad that I use that because it's such a like
a corporate buzzword. But anyways, so I thought that SEO

(13:59):
story was funny, and because we get asked about this
so much, like let's just give it. I mean, That's
why we developed the Purpose Playbook, which we released recently,
is because we get that question so much, and really
what we're doing today because I know not everybody's I
would love for everybody to go get the Purpose Playbook
because we go into so much detail and we give
you all. It's got like thirty six pages of a
workbook to help you literally map this out in your life.

(14:22):
But I know not everybody's going to do that, So
I was like, dude, let's just give it to them
on the podcast, because if you're not going to go
get the Purpose Playbook, hopefully you can still get something
from listening to this. If you wanted to like really
engineer your life, then that's why we made it. But
we're going to give it to you today regardless, because
that's what we're here to do, just to help people grow,
advance the kingdo of God.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
It's like it's like all the things we do. The
whole point of the podcast is we want to give
as much value to people as possible, But like life,
there's extra work that you got to do if you
want maximum benefit. Yeah, as I said before, you've probably
already listened to the book that would change your life. Right,
So the or read the book that would change your life,
and so those things are great, but then you've got

(15:01):
to put them into action. And really all the Purpose
Playbook is is it's like an action step guide. Yeah, right,
the stuff that we're going to talk about today, I'm
giving it all to you and then you could just
go do it on your own if you want to.
The Purpose Playbook, it's kind of like it's the workbook,
right that goes with what we talk about today.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, and there's an hour of unique teaching that you're
not going to get in this podcast, but because we're
going to cover a lot, but to start with g So,
the very beginning of purpose Man and how to live
the most purposeful year of your life is you have
to have the belief that God has a plan and
purpose for your life, which is something you say all
the time. But here's where I think a lot of
people fall down. It's not for you to fail. God

(15:38):
made you to prosper. And that sounds crazy, but it's
wild to me that we have to convince people and
we have to convince ourselves. God actually wants you to prosper,
and when you do things His way, you will grow
in all areas of life, like, he did not give
you work to do, create you for a purpose to
go like, look, you messed it up. He wants it
to be that when we put him on the throne

(15:58):
in the right place and we follow his lead, that
he that we win, and like we we become that
superpowered character that you talked about in the video game
that goes out and accomplishes the plans and fulfills the storyline.
But but we don't. We struggle to believe that.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
That's yeah, that's exactly right, right, Like I said, you
when you purchase this video game and log in, you're logging,
you know, even on some of the games that are
really hard, right, And what's fun about those games is
like they're I've played some games that are ridiculously hard.
Those are the ones that I like. I won't reference
any games because then you guys will know how much
of a nerd I really am. But when you play

(16:34):
these games that are extremely difficult, you still like, even
though sometimes you get evidence it's like this game is ridiculous,
it's impossible. I can't beat this game. You'll say that
out of your mouth, but you know in your heart
this game is Beatable.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Right now, some people will quick not because they say
I can't beat this game. They're saying. They'll say, I
don't want to put in the time that's exactly this game.
But they know it's possible, right, and that like because
they've seen other people do it, right, they and they
know that the developers created the game for you to
beat it. It's just hard to beat. That's what a
belief is. You've got to look at your life and say,

(17:06):
I know that God is a great plan, I know
that I was birthed for a reason. And so some
of that belief comes from there's people who I would
say get close to that, tend towards that belief, who
don't have a relationship with Christ. When you have a
relationship with Christ and you give authority to the word
of God, you know that He created you and his
image and that he created you for a purpose. And
what greatness looks like for your life. We've talked about

(17:29):
this before. It's the Hebrew word raba, where Genesis says
to be fruitful and multiply. The word multiplies the Hebrew
word raba, which means to become great. And when you
look at the definition of Raba. It's to become great
or it's all of it to maximize it. Right. And
this is what a great life for you looks like,
is that you became everything God created you to be,

(17:49):
and it is a meaningfulness. But God did not make
you for no reason. God didn't make you to take
up space. God didn't make you just so that your
organic material that is born and dies and just gives
its energy back to the earth. That is nihilism and
an organic biological form. There's no meaning and purpose to it,

(18:09):
because what's inside of all of us. It's one of
my favorite scriptures. It's Ecclesiastes three eleven. God places eternity
in the human heart. We see humans, get to see
what no purpose looks like. We see biology, we see animals,
We see all of these things around us that have
a very finite purpose, which is to be born and
to die and to give value to other places of

(18:32):
the earth. Just like there's the water cycle. There's all
different types of cycles of the earth and you just
watch it go through its process. But man fits outside
of all of that. Man is not needed for those cycles.
Those cycles all benefit man. And what God put inside
of us is this sense of meaning and purpose. It's
like I like to say, like man is the only

(18:52):
creature that looks up at the stars and wonders what
is my place in all of this? Wonderful, amazing, beautiful,
intelligent animals live their lives and never wonder what is
my place in all of this? But man does. And
that's because we're different. We're not just a piece of flesh.
So you have to have this belief that, okay, I'm
more than just a piece of flesh. That means I
have a purpose. There's a God who made me for

(19:14):
a purpose. And when you believe that, when you take
on this belief, and you know, you've got to understand
if you're new with us, I'll just give it again.
Here's our definition of belief. Things that you know are
true but can't necessarily prove no or true, but can't
prove if you knew it was true that your sports
team would win at the end of the year. If

(19:35):
you knew, you bet everything that you have on it.
But if you just like it, if you're just confident.
A lot of people say they believe in something, they
won't bet a dollar on it. You have to bet
all that you have and Here's the thing in life.
If you want to be great, you're going to have
to make a bet. You're going to have to make
a choice. This is parable of the talents, by the way, right,

(19:58):
if you read the Parable of the Talents Matthew, chapter
twenty five, the one parable I mean the one talent
servant who the Master calls wicked and lazy. He said,
like his first first thing out of his mouth. When
the Master calls him in to give an account for
what he's done, he says, Master, I was afraid, he's
What he's saying is Master, I was scared to make
a bet. I was scared of losing it. The number

(20:21):
one way to lose in life is to never play
the game. Right. You've got to decide, here's what I'm
going to believe, here's what I'm going to bet in.
And if you've lived any measure of life, and I'm
just adding to some people's belief right now, if you've
lived any measure of life, you've realized that I'm not
the thing I should bet on me. Right, I'm not
very dependable. I'm the universe does not revolve around me.

(20:44):
I'm not consistent enough that all of the world should
be centered on my measure of order. There is an
order that exists outside of me, and I want to
make my bets placed upon an order that has always
been and will always be. And that's who God is.
And so when you know that God is a great
plan for your life, then you will begin to play
the game differently.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, that's so good man, And that that just gets me. Like,
I know it's our podcast, but I get fired up
on our podcast because it's true. Man, like to wait
to wake up with that thought process. I mean, this
is what people want, Like you want to wake up
and like know that what you're doing matters. You know.
The emptiest time of my life when I was depressed
was when I just woke up and I was like,
what's the point I'm going to work to earn money.

(21:25):
I don't money. I don't want to spend on the house.
I don't want it. It's the promise of following God.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, I think people get get sold a false bill
of goods sometimes with Christianity and following God. Here's the
true promise of following God that you won't know emptiness, right,
He does not prompt does not promise a life of
ease a life of comfort, a life of prosperity, a
life of secular success. Those things are not promised to us.

(21:54):
What is promised is that you'll become great, and in
the definition of God's greatness, you will love what you do.
What you do will be so fulfilling you won't be
afraid like all of the things that actually make life terrible.
God says, you won't have to deal with those things.
Where we mess it up is where we make a
wrong definition of what a great life is that's different

(22:16):
than the world that God ordered. It's the same way
that people fail in business all the time. They say, well,
it should be this way right, As our man Hermosey
likes to say, you can be right or you can win.
Which would you like to do, Because what he's saying
is a lot of people they taught their their definition
of right is what they think should be right. And
he's saying that the win is based upon laws and order,

(22:39):
and so life has been a certain way for a
long time. It's going to keep being that way, and
you will win in life when you learn how to
play that game, when you understand the law and order
of who God is and the world that He's made
the system He's designed you in, and you begin to
place large bets with your life, you'll like that story
a lot better.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, that's so good, gee, because what I mean, and
that's what that's how we want to live, like you said,
to not know emptiness, but to know what it is
to actually have purpose, To wake up every day and
know that what you're doing is tied to that one thing,
and the one thing is your purpose. Right, So like daily, weekly, monthly,
all your activities you know, and like ideally we'd love
to be able to measure it and know that we're
moving towards those.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
And it's the way that I operate my life today. Right.
I don't know what God's going to do tomorrow. I
don't know what God's going to do next year. What
I do know and what I have placed large bets on,
like what I'm leveraging my life towards, is that what
I'm doing is going to be great. Right. That could
include me dying tomorrow. I could die tomorrow and God

(23:38):
could call that great. What I know is that I've
done everything that I can do up to this point
to serve God's great purpose. And when you trust in
God you trust in his plan more than your own. Now,
I don't think I'm going to die tomorrow, but I
also wrestled with that the first time I nearly died
in combat, right when bullets were flying through my helicopter,

(23:59):
Like I wrestled with God, like, Okay, I guess this
was maybe maybe You're gonna do something with my life
after I'm gone. Because I thought you were gonna do
something with my life. Maybe You're just gonna do something
with my life after I'm gone. This wasn't the way
that I thought it would go, right and then and
then I lived through that moment, and and you know,
I've talked about this many times. Got the reminder like, no,
I still have plans for you. I still have a

(24:20):
purpose for you. If you're alive on the earth. That
means I'm not finished with you. And so what I'm
going to do with every breath in my lungs until
I don't have that is is live with God. With
this understanding that God is a great plan for my life.
I'm going to do all that I can possibly do.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, And I want to encourage people listening. If you
hear Garrett say that and you're like, well, that's you know,
and you're probably not thinking this consciously, but you might
be going, well, you know, I've never had a near
death experience, or I wish I could have a moment
where it would all become clear like that what I'll
say to you, you don't need I've never had a
moment like that. But I wake up and like, I
can stir up the because you have to stir it
up in yourself. You have to remind yourself of why

(24:56):
you're here to about literally everything. I will wait up
at four point thirty, I'll be having my time with
God and I'll be like, man, I'm gonna go do
a workout and I'm gonna come back. I got a
busy work day. It could be easily to be like, oh,
I just got to get through all this, but instead
I'm like, no, this is literally why I'm here. This
is the work God's gave me a do. It's like, well,
wait a minute, aren't you just working in a business?
Like how does that tie? Like these are natural thought processes,
like how do you tie that? I'm telling you, When

(25:17):
you understand why God God's put you here, you literally
start to understand why every single thing that you do
matters and ties to that purpose that He's created you for,
and it is the only way to live. Like the
thought when I was depressed, this is what I was
depressed about, was that I felt that nothing mattered. The
way I live now is that everything matters. And I've
not had a near death experience. It's just I understand

(25:38):
how God has engineered purpose into us and how He's
designed and created us, and so I see every single
thing I'm doing. I'm talking about from you know, driving
my truck to wherever I'm going, to the way that
I look, to the way that I handle my finances,
my marriage, my relationship with my kids, with others, how
I tip somebody when I'm out, like how I treat
people when I come in contact. Like literally every single
thing in my life is tied to the purpose why

(26:00):
God has put me on the earth, and I think
so few people get that. I think the closest thing
we see where it's like engineered or manufactured for not
eternal purposes is in athletics. Like you know, people people
who are like who play a professional sport, they don't
wake up like I'm just gonna use baseball because I
love it. No one They don't go go hit baseball's,
you know, in the off season and be like why
am I doing this? They know that the season's coming

(26:23):
back around, that there's measurables. They can look and see,
here's your batting average, here's your ops, here's your war
like all the stats. We know how valuable you are,
and your job is to be as valuable as possible
to your team because that's when you're gonna win, and
that's the whole point of why you're doing. Okay, purpose,
they don't lack any purpose. And even in that you
see various levels of commitment to like working out and

(26:43):
all the other things and nutrition, but like there's no purpose.
And I think that's what everybody would love, is, man,
how do I have it so that it's like it's
just because you know what that is. That's one hundred
percent certainty. And what we're never gonna say on this
podcast is like, here's one hundred percent certainty. You know,
the four steps to knowing down to the day, like
you know when you're going to die, every single thing
that God has in store for you. It's just that's

(27:04):
not the way that God works. But we want that
and that's the closest thing we see is that is
in athletics. But you know what happens you retire eventually,
and that's where you see a lot of guys get wrecked.
What good am I?

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Now?

Speaker 2 (27:14):
It's my whole identity? What do I do with my life?
You know? And it's like, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Guess I'll just talk about baseball.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Now that's what most are. I'll talk about it, or
I'll coach it, or I'll start my own And like,
I'm not knocking that if that's you, because because honestly,
that could be God's purpose for your life. Because you
were talking to a group of athletes and the thing
that you told me that stuck out is that they're
the most influential people in society is athletes. And so
I go, Okay, does God care about influencing people? One
hundred percent? He does. So if you're an athlete and
you're listening to this, you have a great platform and

(27:41):
do what you do with all your might as unto
the Lord and glorify him through what you do, same
as all of us. But that's where people see the
ideal when in reality, I think how most people live
their lives is, you know, whereas whereas baseball players like,
I want to get really good. So here's my goals
for the year, and here's what I'm going to do
on a daily basis to pursue those goals. I think
most peopleeople are like, yeah, it's December thirtieth, man, Like

(28:02):
I should set a resolution. Man, I really do need
to lose about twenty five pounds of fat. So like
I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna I'm gonna make a goal.
I'm gonna get ripped this year. I'm going to go
from whatever I'm at now to ten percent body fat
and I'm going.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
To get jacked.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
And like they set this goal and it's like, yeah,
what are you doing this year? Man, I'm getting ripped.
I'm gonna make a million dollars. How much do you
make now? I mean like eighty thousand, but it doesn't matter.
I'm gonna make a know And like you in a
wave of inspiration, you see what you would like because
I was also responding to the pain that you have.
And so you set these goals out and then we
have Quitter's Day, which is the second Friday in January,
which is when people most people give up on their goals.

(28:37):
It doesn't even last two weeks because it's a momentary
inspiration where they I believe, caught a good thing of Like, yeah,
you should believe. You should be questioning, like, hey, what
could I do with this time that I've been given
this gift that God's gave me.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
They finally did it because they felt like doing it right.
They stopped doing it when they didn't feel like doing
it right because it had no purpose. It had no purpose.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
When you have like purpose tied to what you're doing,
it's eternal fuel. I said to you beforehand. We were
talking about Garrett and I at the end of the
year and really throughout the year, we are always assessing
what we're doing, but we always look at like the
stuff that we talk about in here is what we
actually live our lives out. So when we're talking about this,
like we're having these conversations internally, Okay, here's what's gone
well this year, Like we're looking ahead next year, like
what should we be setting our sights on? And I

(29:18):
said to Garrett, said, if we do something just for growth,
I'll quit on it. I know because we've tried things
in the past, and I'm like, ah, but if we
do something for purposing. I've never quit doing it.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
For the sake of growth. Is like doing something for
the sake of money, correct, Which is like thinking that
the purpose of a car is to put gas in it. Right,
It's not the purpose of a car, right. You put
gas in the car so the car can go where
it's supposed to go. There's a greater purpose for the
car than the car just driving around exactly right. Money
is fuel, right right? The purpose is not to make money.
Fuel is for the purpose. Yes, very good, gee that

(29:49):
and that's the thing. So the purpose question that I'm
asking about, you know, on this podcast and in my
life is Lord, how do I how can I be
the most faithful with what You've put in my hand?
Because like the way we look at this podcast is
like God's entrusts us with something in this podcast, with
the people that listen, how do we best serve the
people that He's in trusted us with. It's a very
different question, but it's so I know that when we

(30:10):
set a goal or when we identify something, I'll never
stop on it, no matter how in community is, no
matter how tired I am, I'll never stop on it.
Because it's like now it's tied to purpose, and that's
what I know, that's what people want. But for most people,
they will set their goals in a wave of inspiration.
And you said, gee, if they accomplish all their goals,
even the ones that they set in the wave of inspiration,
it still wouldn't really add up to a lot because

(30:30):
there's no central like understanding of purpose. Yes, I mean
to live the most purposeful year of your life, You've
got to start with these beliefs, Okay, Like I've got
to believe at a base minimum. Right, if you listen
to this podcast for long enough, if you have a
relationship with Christ, you're going to pick this up. If
you don't hear it from anybody else, if you've not

(30:51):
had that gift, you're going to hear it from me.
God is a great plan for your life, right, and
let that sing deep into your soul, and let it
be one of the words and frail that means and
matters most to you. Then you've got to get a
picture of what greatness looks like in your life. You've
got to develop your dream.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
We talk a lot more about this and purpose with
Mindset Mastery. We talk a lot more about this in
the Purpose playbook, then you've got to get this understanding
of okay, where am I actually at, what's reality look like,
and set goals accordingly. A lot of people set their
goal like if you're you know, I hope for anyone
that you don't just quit your goals after two weeks.
But there are also people who pursue their goals and

(31:30):
go after them that even if they accomplish them. I'm
not looking down on you, but I would encourage you
to have set different goals than you did because a
lot of people's goals they're very short term focused. They
didn't start with God is a great, great plan for
my life, and here's what the end is supposed to
look like. They set goals based upon something they experienced
in the moment. This is starting a business based upon

(31:53):
something that you know that happened seasonally. That's not going
to be You're not going to want to do this
a year from now. It's not going to benefit anybody
a year from now. Maybe you should have thought a
little bit further ahead in your intention and with the
plans that you made. For example, some people will set
their goals and it's like, well, I'm going to lose
weight this year and make some more money. Okay, let's
say you do that this year, and next year you

(32:15):
set some similar goals. Well, I'm going to try and
make my marriage better, and I'm going to start a
new business. And you do that, and we keep doing
these goals that you set, just whatever you pulled out
of your brain in mid December for the next year,
and you happen to be one of the very few
people who accomplishes what they say every year. Let's say

(32:36):
you did that for ten years. I guarantee you you
won't like where you're at ten years from now because
you did not set all your goals. This is it's
one of my favorite scriptures. Jesus talks about he who
puts his hand to the plow and looks back is
not fit for the kingdom. That is an analogy to
how God says you produce, and you produce by looking
at the end. Right. I won't go into the analogy

(32:57):
now because it takes a little bit longer to describe,
but if you understand how they they did agriculture back
then you have to look at the end. And if
you're setting your goals based well, here's what I'd like
to do this year, and here's what I'd like to
do this year. A great life for you is not
a conglomeration of a bunch of annual goals accomplished, right,
That will be a very disjointed life. You want like

(33:17):
you'll have felt like you accomplish things, but at the
same time feel like you accomplish nothing. You accomplishing your
goals every single year for the next ten years will
not get to you get you where you would say
right now you'd like to be ten years from now.
You have to have a much longer intention, right, You've
got to look further out, Look ten years, look twenty years,
look to the end. And then if that's if you're

(33:40):
focused on where do I want to be in twenty years,
the goals you set this year would be very differently
than if I just asked you what would you like
to do next year?

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, and man, and that is the power of vision
what you just described. And I hope you actually grasp
what you said, because I think for a lot of
people if they could just be like, man, well I
just hit my goals every year and then like that's
going to put me first ahead. Yeah, you're making progress,
but you're probably making progress. It's like it's like walking
in circles and the circles gradually get bigger. You are,

(34:07):
you know, moving further along. You're just not moving nearly
as far along as you could, nor are you actually
going in any coherent direction.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Well, I won't. I won't go into all of them,
but it's kind of like the motivation pyramid that I've
talked about before, a lower level. The highest level of
motivation is that you challenge reality, right, And that's what
I'm That's what this podcast is focused on. So my
personal life is focused on There's some things about reality
that I disagree with im and I aim to challenge them.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
A lot of people's goals in life is like, well,
I'd like to be better than that guy, or I'd
like to be a better version of me, and those
those are not necessarily horrible things, but they're not the
best thing, right, And as are one of our teachers
and mentors who said, Pastor Keith, don't let the good
be the robber of the best. Yeah, so good.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
So starting with vision, like you talked about, and like
vision has seen the mind of God and the presence
of God. That's going to change how you start to live,
how you set things today. I remember we talked about
this all being tied to purpose. When we look at life,
we break it down to eight areas, and it's spirituality, marriage, family, friendships, health, finance, business,
and rest. When you start to see your life and
you realize, okay, that encompasses everything, and you start to

(35:12):
go like, okay, what would vision look like like you
said ten twenty year vision in all those areas. Now
it's like, okay, if God may be to prosper and
there's wisdom for me in all these areas, I need
to start like winning in all these areas. And this
is part of the process of fulfilling the purpose for
my life. But this is where a lot of people
fall down because you can set a vision, like there's
people that have no like I think you can have vision, guse,

(35:33):
it's something that anybody can set. The vision is seeing
the mind of God in the presence of God. So see,
having a godly vision is going to be a game changer.
But I think purpose, where it's an eternal calling card
of God, is where things really separate. And I think
that's where so many people misunderstand. Right, And you've broken
down Purpose GI I mean so well.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
I'll just comment on it quickly.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
We spend a lot of time talking about vision in
the Purpose playbook. We've talked about it a ton of
this podcast. The way my friend Joe Musselman and I
talk about it is it's the world that you imagine.
This is the world we wish to create. This is
the world that we want to see. And you've got
like vision has to be something that's bigger than you.
It's what you want to spend the rest of your
life serving. And a lot of people's vision is poor.

(36:14):
And what I mean by that is your idea of
a vision is well, I'd like to be financially successful.
I'd like to have financial peace, I'd like to have
financial security, I'd like to have financial freedom, whatever that is.
All those things are about you. And I'm not saying
that you can't ever have good things and you deserve
nothing and you're terrible. It's not what I'm saying to people.
But I'm saying that is not an end that you

(36:34):
should pursue. What you should pursue is how can I serve?
What can I do that's meaningful and valuable to other people?
Kind of like our man Tony Robbins. If you know
his story, he didn't set out to make a billion dollars.
What initially inspired him was feeding somebody, and then it
turned into well I'm going to feed a thousand people.
I want to feed a million people. I want to

(36:55):
feed a billion people, right, and that what he's on
right now. Didn't he accomplish that already, which is incredible,
it's insane, right, that's what's been driving him and everything
that you see. Like everyone says like I want Tony
Robbins success, Well you got to want what he wants
to get what he got, right. He didn't want what
he has. He wanted to defeat a billion people, and
he became who he had to be to do that. Right.

(37:15):
It's a great example of a vision, it really is.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
And vision though when you combine it with an understanding
of purpose, that's whenever it becomes absolutely like supercharged, right,
because if vision is seeing the mind of God and
the presence of God, then you start to understand how
purpose works. Well, now, all of a sudden, it's like
your vision isn't just like well, like you said, what
I want, It's like, no, this is driven by something
eternal that I was put on this earth to do.
And we say purpose is what's in your heart and

(37:37):
what's in your hand, which sounds great, but when you
actually understand how that works, you start to realize why
it's so important for you to be faithful with what
you're doing right now, because for a lot of people,
they're going like, well, you know, what I really dream
of is this, But I've got this job that I
do that I don't really like, and actually i'm you know,
out of shape, or you know, I don't really have
great friendships or insert whatever thing that you don't like

(38:00):
is here that doesn't look like the dream that's in
your heart. And for most people, because they can never
see how they're going to get to be what's in
their heart, at some point they quit and they just go,
I guess that wasn't meant to be, or like that
was foolish or whatever. They have to tell themselves to
make it not hurt as much. That's what happens, and
my heart goes out to you because it's like I've
been there, man, Like I've been there where I'm like, dude,
this is not my life, but yet it was my life,
and it was not pretty.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Well, it's a small vision. Right, But when you have
a vision that is great, When you have a vision
that's serving God, when your heart is for him, when
you develop wisdom from having a heart that's for him,
that's where you can do like what Joseph did, right,
some of my inspiration in my life. You can do
what Joseph did where he had a dream and for
thirteen years never got any closer to it for thirteen years. Right,

(38:44):
yet yesterday it mighty men. I was talking about some
of the other people who served for a long time,
people like Noah for approximately seventy five years, built his dream,
built what God told me to build in a world
that had no value for his dream. Right, that ridiculed him,
made fun of him, cursed him. You're a fool. You're
doing the wrong thing, building something that he didn't know

(39:05):
would ever have any value. Right, But just because God
told him, right, And maybe your dream isn't going to
be God told you. Maybe your dream is going to
be like Joseph, where it just says Joseph had a dream,
but Joseph's dream became God's purpose for his life. You've
got to decide, I'm going to like God is a
great plan for my life. Here's what I believe is right.
Here's the way that I want to fix the world,

(39:27):
because here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
The way that I want to fix the world's different
than the way. What you know, all of you guys
that are listening, you have God's put different dreams in
your heart. God's put different skills in your hand. God
God raised you around different people, exposed you to different
things than I was exposed to. And you see a
different way, you see a different way to make the
world better. Right. But when you'll focus on that and say,
you know what, this is the thing, and this is
the way that I like to talk about vision and

(39:50):
purpose is I share his name as many times as
I can. My friend Charlie Keating, who died May third,
twenty sixteen, with a smile on his face, right, with
a smile on his face, died. Most people will not
die that way, right. They won't die happy, they'll die sad,
they'll die afraid, they'll die depressed. Charlie didn't die with

(40:11):
a smile on his face because his family received a
four hundred thousand dollars death benefit when he died. It's
what the military if you pay into it, by the way,
you have to do. There's somebody's I remember what it
was like, fifteen bucks a month, Right, you have to
sign up for it. And if you and if you
do that, when you die, that's what the military pays
to your family. That's not why Charlie died with a
smile on his face. He died with a smile on

(40:32):
his face because he died fighting for something that was
worthy of giving his life to. Because here's the truth.
Here's the truth for all of us. Not I hope
for nobody listening to this podcast, but at least for
the vast, vast majority of us. You're not going to
die the way that Charlie did in an instant. You're
going to die slowly. You're going to die over the
next ten, twenty, thirty, forty fifty, sixty, seventy years. Maybe

(40:54):
for some of you listening to this podcast, health is
getting better. Maybe some of you don't die for eighty
ninety or a hundred years from now, some of you
who are young. But at some point you will die,
and you won't have died quickly, you'll have died slowly.
But the point is you'll die, and you will What
will determine if you die with a smile on your
face or not is what you gave your life to.

(41:14):
Charlie gave his life in an instant. The rest of
us are going to give our life over decades. But
you still gave your life to something. If you don't
give your life, you don't live for something that you'd
be willing to die for, you will die sad, alone, depressed,
wishing you had done it differently. And so watching some
of my friends give their life for this country and
do it no, you know, it's crazy. Like when Charlie died,

(41:37):
there's so much honor right, like we honored this man.
It was almost like it was sad that he died,
But at the same time, there's like a victory in it.
I want to die victoriously. I don't want to die
on the battlefield I was willing to do that. That's
not what I'm asking for. But I do want to
die victoriously. And the way that you're going to die
victoriously is that you gave your life to something that

(41:58):
was more valuable than you, or you can die sad
and selfish.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, that's so good man. So, like we said, so
living the most purposeful year of your life. I hope
you guys can understand how important vision is now, the
understanding of purpose, and it is really important here because,
like I said, it's what's in your heart and what's
in your hand. And we've talked about this at length
on other podcasts. I'm going to try and give people
what they need here. So many people will look at
what's in their hand, and what's in your hand is

(42:23):
literally everything that you've been in trust with right now,
whether you think you were in trust with it or not,
or you chose it or not. You have your experiences,
your reputation, your name, your job, your resources, your skills,
your friendships, your family, all that, like literally every single
thing that is in your hand. And you can look
at it two ways. You can go like, man, I
drive a Toyota. What I really want to drive is

(42:44):
a Ferrari. I'm just using this as an example, and
you can get depressed that, like, because what's the toyota
you got is in a Ferrari. So you just treat
the toyota terribly. I don't change the oil. Whatever, it's
not a Ferra, I don't need to treat it nicely.
But when I get a Ferrari, then I'll start doing
all these things. That's how a lot of people think
when you start realizing, hang on a minute, God's the
one that's engineering your purpose, not you, which means you've

(43:04):
got to be faithful with what's in your hand. So
what if, sticking with the car analogy, I'm going to
make sure that I am being excellent with my car.
I'm going to make sure it's always clean. I'm gonna
make sure that it's good, it's getting the mats that
it needs, that I'm putting the right type of fuel
in it, that I'm driving intelligently. Because you know what,
then whenever I get the Ferrari, I don't need to
be like, oh man, I need to learn a bunch
of stuff. I'm ready for it. And so when we

(43:24):
say purposes, what's in your heart with.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
You can't take care of a Toyota because Toyota's have
a pretty low maintenance the file, Yeah, you can't take
care of Toyota. Your Ferrari is gonna fall apart.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yeah oh yeah, yeah, you're gonna You're gonna be bad
and that. But that's a great that's a great uh,
a great analoge of it, because you're right, it is
what your purpose is going to demand more of you
than what you currently are right now. So if you
if you can't figure out what you got right now,
why would you ever think that you have.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Everybody wants a bigger house. You can't take care of
the house you got. Yeah, don't don't double the square footage?

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Right? Well, I would like to make more of an impact. Well,
how how are you making an impact where you're at now? Well,
my dream is to have you know, to reach millions
of people. How are you reaching the three people that
are in your family right now? How are you reaching
the four people that you see at the coffee shop
every day?

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Like? This is so, that's God's multiplication undred percent. If
you can't use what I've given you, I won't give
you more. Lead yourself, It's one of Pastor Key's great templates.
Lead yourself, lead your wife, lead another man, then you
begin to multi You can lead lif If you can
do those things, you can lead so many people. But

(44:27):
if you can't lead yourself, well, if you can't lead
your wife, well, if you can't lead another man, well
you're not going to be able to lead tens, hundreds
thousands of.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
People, and when you understand that, you won't see purpose
until you look back that it's not like you go,
you know, you have this thing where I was like, ah,
this is exactly what I'm going to do, but you understand,
actually I need to be faithful with what's in my
hand right now, Man, I got this dream in my heart.
One day, those things cross and you look up and
you go, wait a minute. I used to dream about
this stuff, and now that's exactly what my life is.

(44:56):
That's whenever you kind of go, wait a minute, purpose
is actually on me. Now.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
I'm still experience I mean, I'm thirty five at this point,
and I'm still experiencing stuff in my life where here's
a dream I've had since I was a little boy
here and it doesn't match up with what's in my hand.
I'm still in seasons of my life where I'm just
finally seeing some things come together that I've had this
dream for a long time, right And there's stuff in front,
like there's stuff that I see is like happening now

(45:21):
that's happening in the next couple of years. And there's
stuff that I see that still I don't know where
this is going to happen, or if it's ever going
to happen, I'm just going to keep running like it is.
You have to have this again. It goes back to
the beliefs foundation, the belief's anchor. You've got to say,
God is a great plan. I'm going to leave as
hard as I can. I'm going to do all that
I can. And if God doesn't do exactly what I
wanted him to do or doesn't show up the way

(45:42):
that I wanted him to, I'm not going to be
sad and cry about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
And so when you have that vision and you haven't
understand of how purpose works, it's like, Okay, here's the
twenty year vision I have for all those areas of
my life for like my spiritual and my marriage, my family,
my friendships, my health, my finance, my business, my rest.
This is like what I see, This is what I think,
this is what I believe I'm believing God for. But
I understand that it's not gonna happen because I'm gonna
wish for it, or God's just gonna genie got it

(46:07):
and have you know, just bring it in one day.
I've got to be faithful with what's in my hand
before I'll see it's in my heart. So now I'm
gonna get to work. But I'm not just gonna get
to work and be like I'm just gonna drink seven
Red bulls a day and just work twenty seven hours
a day.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Like, well, we've been misled into what our version of
a hero is. Yeah right. A Hollywood hero is luck,
a Hollywood hero is like, well, everything was given to
this guy, like Superman just showed up on Earth and
has all the powers. Right, these people are so different
than us. That's romantic and fun to watch because it's detachment.

(46:41):
It's entertainment. It doesn't put obligation upon you. Yeah right,
Like and if you once you become wise to it,
you won't really like those stories anymore. God's version of
a hero is David, where like it says in Psalms,
because of the way that he shepherded his people, shepherded
his deep, and the skill of his hand, the integrity

(47:02):
of his heart, God made him the king because of
what he did with little things. God made him the king.
That's like, that's not typically the Hollywood hero story. Here's
this small guy, you know, who just was great at
sweeping the floor, and God made that guy at King.
That's not the Hollywood hero, is the luck hero. And

(47:23):
so make sure you're not paying attention to the wrong stories.
Let you let your idea of a hero's story, lets
your idea of becoming, lets your idea of growth and
greatness come from many of the great stories in the
Word of God.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Yeah, so good. So once you once you understand that
vision and purpose and you're ready to get to work,
you also have to understand priorities. And the way we
define priorities is what you're least willing to fail at, caveat.
You don't want to fail at any of those. So
this messes people up when I say this. Priorities are
different than goals.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Terms matter, right, if you deal in business, if you
deal in contract, if you deal in things that matter,
you understand that definition sets up everything. Start writing a
big contract, you'll realize the first thing you've got to
do is define terms. You need to understand. You know
what you know, what you should value. A lot is
your life and define a lot of people like they
set these parameters for their life on terms they don't

(48:15):
even understand. Define rules, define goals, define vision, mission. That's
why We take terms on this podcast really seriously because
I'm trying to give people the Actually, you know, if
I just say grab a firearm, like, that's a lot
of things. Right, let me tell you exactly what you
need for this mission, right, you need to know with
precision what is what is determining and directing where your

(48:39):
life is going. And okay, so priorities, let me let
me give some meaning to this. Priorities and goals are
not the same thing. Goals is what you would like
to accomplish. Goals is what you want to give effort
and resources towards. Priorities is what you defend. Priorities is
what you would least like to fail at a lot
of people. I wouldn't say, put me on a pedestal,

(48:59):
but look at me with a measure of authority and ministry,
with a measure of you know, Okay, that guy really
follows God. And it messes people up when I say,
none of my goals are about increasing my relationship with God.
I don't have any like my goals for last year,
my goals for the year before that, my goals for
next year. None of them say like i' you know,
want to grow on my relationship with God. It's not

(49:21):
one of my goals. My number one priority is that
I would never fail in my relationship with God, that
I would never backslide in my relationship with God. It's
what I would die defending. It's what I'm willing to
die for. And what is your number one, number two,
number three? Priorities in your life should be things that
you would leap in front of a car for. Right
right now, I've got a lot of goals that I'd

(49:43):
like to accomplish. I wouldn't leap in front of a
car for a lot of my goals. I would leap
in front of a car for my priorities. These are
the things I least want to fail at. No, I
don't want to fail at anything right, But I know
with order and precision, which measure of these things. This
is a It's one of the challenge painful, difficult parts
of battlefield medicine is what's called triage. And triage comes

(50:07):
from many horrible lessons learned in combat medicine. Not just
like last one hundred years, through hundreds of years of
studied combat medicine. Is that there's times where you have
a medic you have one medic. You have two medics
and you have seventy four people injured. You can't treat
all of those people, and so what the medic has
to It's one of the most painful things in medic

(50:27):
would ever have to do is look at people who
are in pain, screaming, in pain, dying and quit in
a second, assess their injuries, say I can't help him,
as you would just why a lot of people? So
that's so mean. I could take the principle from combat
medicine and pull it into today's culture and identify a
lot of problems people say that, So why wouldn't you

(50:50):
help that person? Because helping ease this person's pain means
sacrificing another person's life. And sometimes in life you have
to make hard decisions, right, you have to know what's
by one structure and order would I make these difficult decisions.
A combat medic knows through triage that I'm going to
quickly look at everyone's wounds and determine whose life can
I save, not whose pain can I ease. It's putting

(51:12):
value on the wrong things and with priorities. You have
to be able to do this and say, hey, look,
I don't want to fail at anything a combat medicine say,
I don't want anybody to die, but I understand reality
and I can't save everyone today. So who can I save?
And I'll give the most value in the least you know,
I have minimal resources of my time and combat tools,

(51:34):
I mean in medic tools. So here's what I can accomplish.
You have to be prepared to do this with your priorities.
If they were going, if domino started falling in my life,
which ones will I defend the most? So once you
have your priorities, and to have my list of priorities,
then after that, once I got all my priorities defended,
once my house is in order, by the way, it's

(51:55):
one of Jordan Peterson's rules for life. Once my house
is in order, then all the energy, effort, time resources
I have left, I will fully direct them at my goals. Right.
It's the difference, right. A lot of people think priorities
and goals are the same thing. No, they're very different.
There's defense and offense in life.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
That's so good man, And that understanding you talked about
in relation to time, energy resource, it's also with seasons
of life. And I'm not going to go fully into this,
but like, there's you know, there's times if you're in
your early twenties, what do you have? You have a
lot of time and a lot less responsibilities. Now your
priority might be spirituality aka God first for your entire life,

(52:33):
but like all the other seven that follow after that
are going to be in a different order at that
season in your life, and so like things like friendships
might be really high up, which means you're gonna be like, yeah,
I'm gonna put a lot of time and energy towards
these things because I'm in that season of life where
it's like you know, and I don't think a lot
of twenty year olds actually realize this, but when you
look back on it, you're like, oh, yeah, Like I
look at my season of my life I'm in right now,
and I'm like, you know what, my friendships are are

(52:54):
deeply important to me, but they're not as high up
the priority list right now because what am I doing.
I'm building a family, I'm building businesses, I'm there's I'm
in a lot of things. So what I have to
do is I have to order my life so that
I can still invest in those things, but find a
way to do it, and that's not going to be like,
oh man, I need seven days a week of like
hanging out with people otherwise I'm failing here. And that
that's why I think a lot of people get into it.

(53:16):
Hung with the homies in forty hours. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well,
people bring a twenty year old definition. It's like, hey,
what are your friendships? Like, how do you know if
someone's your real friend?

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Man?

Speaker 2 (53:23):
They just did my ride or die. We talk all
the time. They know everything going on in my life.
And I'm like, okay, hang on a minute, for like,
who who do you actually have?

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Like that?

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Well, I don't, man, And that's why people suck. Oh
so everybody sucks because yeah, I mean that's like that's
like inner dude bro Nick from like his young his
late teens, Like, but you know that that's the you know,
that's that's how a lot of people will be. They'll
feel like they don't have any friends. It's because they
have a bad definition and aka a misunderstanding of the
season of life that they're in. And so when you

(53:51):
start to understand the season of life that you're in,
you apportion the priorities of things differently. You know what
I mean, and so I just I'll just say that
it's it's worth a lot more exploring or to explore
exploration there. But I want to move on because I
think we've explained what priorities are. So then once you
do this, it's like, okay, well I'm gonna set some
Remember the whole point of this is that we're gonna
set some You want to live purposely every day, aka

(54:13):
you want to give yourself some targets and some goals
that are tied to a larger vision and purpose that
God that you know that God's put in your life.
So when you wake up and you're like, here's where
I'm pursuing today, you don't ever have to sit there
and wonder why. Because if you ever have to wonder why,
or you start thinking the why doesn't matter, that is
the beginning of quitting. When you understand your rules for
growth aka how you measure progress, it is a game changer.

(54:33):
And we go over this, like I said, like with
all this, we go over this a lot deeper in
the Purpose Playbook. But I'm just gonna I'll give you this.
If you're trying to say, what do you mean for
rules for growth? If I said to you, hey, how
was your marriage last year? Like did it get better
or worse? Everyone's gonna have an answer if they're married,
And then I would say, okay, why when you give
me your why you were giving.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Me, Well, don't ask you that question.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Well yeah, but if I say did your health get
better or worse? And you do dexis scans, that's super easy, right, like,
well I was you know, I dropped down to this
percent whatever. But if I say your marriage, or if
I say, like your friendships or your relationship with God,
that's very subjective. So like this and this is where
people fall apart. So like the marriage example. Actually, I'll
stick with friendships here because I use that example previously
on priorities. The friendship example, if I say did your

(55:13):
friendships get better or worse? If somebody says worse, I'll
say why, And it's like, okay, well, you know, let's
let's say that you still have a bad definition of friendship. Well,
you know I didn't. I didn't like hang out with
people nearly as much. I felt like, you know, like
none of my friends, like they're all off doing their
own thing, and you know, I don't. I just don't
feel like we're very connected and we don't ever like
go do anything. Okay, so what are your rules for

(55:36):
friendship that you need to do things together? You need
to know what's going on in the life in your life,
and you need to you need to to be spending
time together. So if you have that understanding of that's
how you feel progress and friendships, guess what things you
need to start doing to serve that area of your life.
You need to be the one that initiates time to
hang out, you know, you need to be the one

(55:57):
that's making the call to your friends. So you might
sit there and go like, you know what, because I
want to grow in this area, I'm going to make
sure that I'm intentional about that. Now, if you're smart
and if you understand priorities as well, you might be going, well,
I'm thirty eight and I've got three kids and two
businesses and a wife, so I can't be this is
not going to be a weekly thing of us hanging out.
I'm going to make sure that I have whatever three
really intentional friendships, and with those people, I'm going to

(56:19):
call them, you know, twice a week, and we're going
to hang out once a month. That would be a
way to like intelligently put something in place that's sustainable,
that's process based all year and you can win.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Or maybe you get it. You learn what we've talked
about here for how to multiply your life right. And
your friends are the people that you're exactly the Kingdom
of God with. Your friends are the people that you're
building businesses with. And so you get to have great
relationships because you do the most meaningful things together.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
Right, And that's that's combining in alignments with it. But
I hope you're seeing, like for the rules for growth.
Most people, if you said to get better or worse,
then you ask them why, they'll sell it, say all
the reasons, but they don't realize that actually they've just
told you everything that measures progress. And some people need
to change their rules. So once you've like understood all
these things, then you can actually, like I gave an
example of what an intelligent goal would be for friendship
if you were going to choose to set a goal

(57:06):
for friendship. Now you actually say, Okay, here's the purpose
for my life. Here's here's the areas that are Like
I have the vision, I have the purpose. I understand
what priorities are I understand what actually makes me feel
progress in these areas in my rules, and sometimes you
need to change your rules. So now I can actually
sit there and go and select targets and you g
are are your target is your thing?

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Goals I call goals target selection, right, because in the military,
there was priority, there was order of importance from Hey,
here's the big vision, right, Like, let's just talk military
for a second, because that's where my target selection term
comes from. In the military, the big vision, right, you
swore an oath to protect and defend this country right

(57:49):
when you join the military. So the big vision is
protect and defend freedom and democracy, protect and defend the
ideals of America. Be willing to give your life for this.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
This is the vision.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Okay. Then under an beneath that, depending on what branch
of the service you're in, what region of the world
you go to, there's dozens of different major mission sets
that the military is involved in. Right now, you've got
even more stuff. You've got space warfare, cyber protection. There's
all these different major mission sets that you can be under.
But you get underneath one of those large mission sets

(58:20):
and then there are submissions underneath that right in the
seal teams, I was operating in like a second or
third level of submission underneath a major primary mission. Then
they would say like, okay, here's your mission, the big mission,
like protect and defin this area, assert dominance in this area,
remove this, remove this set of ideals from this area,

(58:42):
eliminate this group of people, develop intel on this group
of people. This is like a submission set of like, hey,
here's what you need to accomplish. That accomplishes this, That
accomplishes this. So once you get that, you get a
mission that is digestible to a point where you can
develop a strategy by which to accomplish those things. And
Eisenhower said, planning is essential. Plans are useless. What you

(59:04):
do is you take this. Here's what's in my hand. Right.
They didn't put in Garrett's hand, protect and defend freedom
and democracy. That was why I was doing what I
was doing. That can't fit in any one man's hand.
But they did put within not just my hand, but
like my team and my platoon's hand. They put in
our hand. They said, okay, remove this group of people. Right,

(59:24):
you can do it. I can't tell you how, and
you can't do it all at once, and you probably
don't know exactly what the answer is, but there's a
way to do it. You guys figure it out, Okay.
That then you develop some planning, some strategy that goes
with that, and we basically set a series of goals.
We're going to do this, which will lead to this,
which will lead to this, just like a business can

(59:44):
have OKRs and say it like objectives and key results.
I'm going to do this and here's whew. I'll measure
the success right, and that'll lead to the next thing
and lead to the next thing. That's target selection. So
bringing this back to where I was talking about goals,
a lot of people just get out there on the
battlefield of life and hey, let's shoot a bad guy today,
right right, Like great, you shot a bad guy today.
You shoot a bad guy one hundred days in a

(01:00:06):
row and accomplish nothing towards protecting, defending freedom and democracy.
You've exposed yourself quite a bit, probably taken some casualty
along the way, and not may any You've accomplished tasks
but made no meaningful growth towards what the greater objective is.
So target selection different than goals. Goals is just like, literally, hey,

(01:00:26):
let's shoot that target. Let's shoot that target. Target selection
is looking at the greater vision and mission and seeing
the linear path all the way from protecting, defending freedom,
democracy down to what I'm going to do tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Yeah, and that's that's really where we want everybody to
get to, because when you have that level of significance
tied to what you're doing, that's whenever you'll you'll never
stop running. And we would say that you would also
want to weigh these up against your core values and
have a time management framework in place, because, like we said,
so many people lose sight of these things for the
sake of time. Because we are coming up on an

(01:00:59):
hour here, I'm just gonna I'm gonna just say that
you need to have a process in place if you
want ours. We literally have a free blog for the
time management Framework for how to keep aligned with your goals.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Nick Nick contributed a lot to our time management framework.
A lot of you know, people want maybe seal thought
process for time management, but Nick added so much value
to what we teach in Mindset Mastery and what we
teach in Purpose Playbook as it aligns to time management.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, thanks to you, it's because it's what I mean.
I've run three businesses, I got three kids, I'm deeply
involved in ministry. I work out and do all these
different things. You have to be good at time management.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
I said that to say there's great value in the
time management piece because it's like both of us adding
a lot from very different perspectives.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Right, And I learned a lot of the base found
like foundational principles from you and then just apply them
in my life. So, guys, I hope, like I hope
you are looking ahead. I hope that you're seeing yourself
with potential and saying, man, I am made for a reason.
I want to develop my character to go out and
fulfill complete the mission and slay the end boss. And
know that whenever you slay that end boss and you
get to the end of the game, you know what

(01:02:00):
you hear in real life, well done, good and faithful servant.
And when you have that understanding in that perspective, you
go and you develop yourself. You understand how purpose works,
that you've got to be faithful with what's in your hand.
You understand prioritizing your life and understanding the things that
you are not willing to fail at and from there
you understand how you progress, and you can set goals
that you can wake up every single day and know
that today matters. All the little things, all the things

(01:02:22):
that other people call mundane, are the things that you
begin to find joy in because you know that it's
tied to a greater purpose. And when you live like that,
you will know that God is with you, He's given
you grace, He's gone before you. And when you set
out each and every single day, every single person you
come across is part of that path, part of that purpose,
and you will literally feel this incredible sense of purpose
that so many people say they want. And it's because

(01:02:43):
you understood that God had a plan for you and
you followed after it with every single thing that you had.
Thank you very much for listening. Guys, Remember to share,
like subscribe. If you think that this would be something
that someone would enjoy it, please send it to him.
We appreciate it all. If you want to get in touch,
you can follow us on Instagram at the Impossible Life.
You'll find us on there. You can also email at

(01:03:05):
Impossible Life Podcasts at gmail dot com if you have
any questions. If you want to get in touch and
find out about Garrett's personal or business coaching. That's the
way to do it. Thank you again for listening. Go
out there and think better and live the impossible. To
see again soon

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Burden

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}264. How to Live the Most Purposeful Year of Your Life

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Burden

All Episodes

264. How to Live the Most Purposeful Year of Your Life

Stuff You Should Know