On this episode of The Long View, Jordan Grumet, author and hospice doctor, breaks down how we can understand our purpose, wealth, success, and happiness from his latest book called The Purpose Code: How to unlock Meaning, Maximize Happiness, and Leave a Lasting Legacy.Here are a few highlights from Grumet’s conversation with Morningstar’s Christine Benz.Why We Get ‘Purpose Anxiety’Christine Benz: So you’ve referenced what you call purpose anxiety a couple of times—that people feel some anxiety, discomfort with this idea that they need to find something to do with their lives that is going to have an impact. Can you talk about that purpose anxiety, what it is and why we see that in people? Jordan Grumet: Sure.I think we get purpose anxiety for two main reasons. One is we’ve been told by society that purpose is this ultimate important thing. And most of us think we have this one big purpose and we either find it and are elated and life is good, or we don’t find it and everything else is lost. So first and foremost, society tells us that purpose is very high stakes. So that leads to a lot of anxiety, especially in people who haven’t really identified what any of those purpose anchors are. That’s number one. The other thing is we have a lot of forces in society today that are trying to sell us a version of purpose. They are trying to get us to co-opt their version of purpose. So who are these people? Well, there are lots of people trying to sell us things. So if you look at influencers and if you go to TikTok or Instagram, you’re going to see all these visions and images of people with six-pack abs, traveling to every country in the world, running seven-figure businesses, and just totally enjoying life. And the reason why they’re creating these images usually is to sell us something. They want us to buy their product. They want us to follow their channels so they get more advertising revenue. They want to tell us that this is how we’re supposed to live life. But the problem is most of us don’t really have agency to do those things.A lot of us don’t have the genetics to have six-pack abs, nor the time, nor the patience to figure out your diet and exercise, and so on. Most of us are not going to travel all around the world and most of us are not going to run seven-figure businesses. So not only do we have influencers, but we also have marketers and people who are trying to sell us products who are going to sell us all these images of what living the good life looks like and convincing us that the way we get there is by buying their product. And so what this really does is this gives us this high-stakes version of purpose that’s very, very hard to achieve and makes us feel bad when we don’t. And so purpose anxiety is a very real thing. And there are plenty of studies about purpose anxiety and most of them show that up to 91% of people at some point in their life have purpose anxiety. So purpose can really be a force of
Lun. Gen 13th, 2025
