Life to the Fullest

Those are the very first words of the Introduction. As per the sub-title, this book is all about “finding your purpose and following your heart.”

Darrin walks us through a number of people who echo the same wisdom—from Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Stephen King to Bill Belichick, Nick Saban and Derek Jeter.

In his 2005 Stanford University commencement address, Jobs tells us: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know it when you find it. … Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. … Everything else is secondary.”

btw: Professor William Damon was on the stage at that Stanford graduation ceremony when Jobs gave that speech. He talks about it in his great book on creating a coherent narrative for our lives called A Round of Golf with My Father in which he quotes Jobs who also said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Richard Branson tells us: “Life’s too short to waste your time doing things that don’t light your fire. … There is no greater thing you can do with your life and your work than follow your passions—in a way that serves the world and you.”

Stephen King is one of the most famous authors of our time. As we discuss in our Notes on his fantastic book, On Writing, he tells us: “I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it. … I have written because it fulfilled me. … I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for the joy, you can do it forever.”

Bill Belichick won more Super Bowls than any coach in NFL history. He tells us: “Don’t pick a career for money or some other reason. Do what you love, because it will never feel like work.”

Nick Saban is the most successful college football coach in modern history. He tells us: “It is imperative that we all make every effort to do what we love. My job is definitely a challenge, but I like what I do so much that it rarely feels like work for me.”

Joseph Campbell echoes the importance of “following your bliss” in Finding Joe.

As we’ve discussed, I happen to be the guy in the documentary who connects that phrase to the ancient wisdom that inspired Campbell. You can check out the clip in the movie here. (It’s the first clip on the page!)

Here’s the passage from The Power of Myth: “Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word ‘Sat’ means being. ‘Chit’ means consciousness. ‘Ananda’ means bliss or rapture. I thought, ‘I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.’ I think it worked.”

The consensus seems pretty clear that we want to follow our heart.

Yes. And... Let’s chat about what that means for YOU a little more with our next Big Idea...

Now THIS is a REALLY important point.

In fact, this is the central theme of the entire book.

Living a life of purpose DOES NOT NECESSARILY mean you will go after the big, fancy career that impresses the neighbors.

You *may* feel called to go big and coach the equivalent of that NFL team packed with stars.

Or...

You may feel called to focus on working with the kids in your local community and helping THEM show up as the best, most Heroic version of themselves.

Living life to the fullest requires that you slow down and truly follow YOUR heart and have the courage to do (and celebrate!) what YOU are here to do.

For the main character in our book, his purpose was to follow his father’s footsteps and coach a high school football team in the small Midwestern town in which he grew up and NOT try to make it “big.”

He doubts himself as we all do. He wonders if he made a mistake following his father’s advice and wasted his life in the process. Then he gets an opportunity to see what his life *might* have looked like if he didn’t have the courage to trust himself. And, well, it’s not pretty.

One of the most powerful moments of my life came when I was chatting with a woman in our Heroic Coach program. She chose to stay at home and raise her kids. She was now a grandmother. But, it wasn’t until our connection that she TRULY celebrated the fact that being the best possible mother and now the best possible grandmother she could be WAS her purpose.

She could celebrate the fact that she had played her role incredibly well and (finally!) let go of all the doubt and second-guessing and truly appreciate just how blessed she was and the fact that she had followed her heart and lived a life of deep purpose.

Note: I got tears in my eyes typing that.

All that to say: YOU have a unique set of experiences and skills and roles and responsibilities and ONLY YOU can decide what YOU are called to do.

And, as Viktor Frankl tells us:“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Frankl also tells us: “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life... Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

Joseph Campbell comes to mind again.

In Pathways to Bliss, he tells us: “But the simple tasks of our life, when you’re doing them because they’re a function or factor in the life that you love and have chosen and have given yourself, then they don’t weigh you down.”

Campbell says this in conversation with a woman talking about doing the dishes and how that ties into the hero journey: “You bet your life. All life has drudgery to it... In Zen, however, even while you’re washing the dishes, that’s a meditation, that’s an act of life. It’s not a chore, and it’s not what you’ve just been calling it. Sometimes the drudgery itself can become part of the hero deed. The point is not to get stuck in the drudgery but to use it to free you.”

Here’s to making it ALL part of the “hero deed.”

Not someday. TODAY.

P.S. Admiral McRaven echoes this wisdom in The Hero Code.

He tells us: “The idea of duty is a simple one. We all have a job to do in life. Whether that job is serving customers in a restaurant, taking care of our family, teaching our children, policing our cities, caring for the ill and infirm, protecting our gate, following the military Code of Conduct, or leading the country, we must do our job to the best of our ability. We must do our job well, not because it serves our interest, but because it serves the interests of others. We do not live in this world alone. Duty is a recognition that you have a responsibility to your fellow man and woman. It is an unselfish act, whether great or small, that contributes to the welfare of humanity. That is what makes it so very powerful. If you want to be a hero, it’s easy. Just do your duty!”

Our main character is doubting the choices he’s made.

He has a chance to go back and change ONE moment of his life.

And...

Check out the book for what happens.

For now, let’s go back to Joseph Campbell and his wisdom.

In the Power of Myth, he talks about EXACTLY this situation.

Here’s how he puts it: “There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, the ‘love of your fate,’ which is in fact your life. As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing.”

Of course, even if we *are* living a life that feels aligned (however imperfectly!) to our highest purpose, we will STILL have many moments we wish we could go back and change.

And...

If we changed a SINGLE one of those moments, we’d “unravel” the WHOLE thing.

This is why all the great teachers emphasize the importance of saying “YES!” to it all. Whether it’s Michael Singer telling us to “surrender” to reality, or Byron Katie telling us to “love what is.”

William Damon talks about this in his latest book in which he helps us create a “coherent narrative” for our lives.

Here’s how he puts it in A Round of Golf with My Father:“In the field of psychology, the groundbreaking promoter of an affirmative approach was Victor Frankl, a major influence on the views I present in this book. Frankl wrote his landmark Man’s Search for Meaning while imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II. His book ushered in a new perspective on how to promote psychological well-being that emphasizes purpose, meaning, and other elevated human capacities. Frankl’s insights became the foundation of now-prevalent trends in psychology that focus on the value of positive mental states.

It’s worth noting that Frankl gave his book a different title from the one eventually crafted by its English-language translator. Frankl’s original title was Nevertheless Say Yes to Life—capturing, in a short phrase, what affirming our past experiences means. Affirmation of past choices and events that have shaped our lives means saying yes rather no to them. It means looking for lessons in mistakes. It means finding opportunities in hardships and redemption in regrets. Frankl showed how this could be done under the bleakest of circumstances.”

Is there anything in your life to which you need to say, “YES!”?

Let’s affirm our past choices as we alchemize the experiences into wisdom for our Heroic quests.

Inner peace.

That deep sense of tranquility that comes when we trust that we’re doing the best at what we feel called to do. THAT’s what we’re after.

The ancient Stoics talked about this. They had a word for it: euthymia.

Here’s how Ryan Holiday puts it in Ego Is the Enemy:

“According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymia is one we should think of often: it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means ‘tranquility’ in English.) ...

So why do you do what you do? That’s the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Only then will you understand what matters and what doesn’t. Only then can you say no, can you opt out of stupid races that don’t matter, or even exist. Only then is it easy to ignore ‘successful’ people, because most of the time they aren’t—at least relative to you, and often even to themselves. Only then can you develop that quiet confidence Seneca talked about.”

Here’s to trusting ourselves, following our hearts, playing our roles well and giving the world all we’ve got, Hero!