Far too many people wake up every single morning
in their 40s and wondering, “how the hell did I get here?”
Because they would choose to pick a career before they could legally buy a beer.
Do we really need college degrees?
We train our kids from the time they are born to study not because for the love of learning
but so that they can pass standardized tests.
That becomes their goal, pass a standardized test,
and then this continues.
Then you have to get a good GPA in college, then you go to apply to grad school,
then you've got to do well on your LSAT, so you can become a lawyer.
But why do people even want to have these careers in the first place?
Often we have 18 and 19 year olds choosing means goals rather than end goals.
Do you know for example that 50 percent of female lawyers are clinically depressed?
But why do people become lawyers?
Because they see it on TV, they don't know better,
they watch shows like Ally McBeal, like law school applications went up
after L.A. Law and Ally McBeal.
And so what happens is you have all these people
blindly following the herd like sheep.
Now why does this happen?
Means goals.
The means, the goal in their head was a means to an end.
But what happens if you get rid of the mean and you directly pursue the end?
So what are the ends?
What are the end goals?
Well of course happiness is one, right?
But happiness is a little bit too vague.
What are truly the end goals that define us, that make us live awesome lives,
that will make us know that on the day we die we did not waste it?
So the thing is, there are three things,
three things that if you answer, If you answer these three questions
it sets you on the path to end goals.
Now the first one is, what experiences do I want in my life?
The second is, how do I want to grow?
And the third is, how do I want to contribute to the world?
Experiences, growth, contribution.
Why did I pick these three?
Well I pick experiences because I believe that we are souls
having a physical experience.
As C.S. Lewis said, “You do not have a soul,
you are a soul, what you have is a body”.
But if you buy into that model of reality, why are we here in the first place?
I believe it's for the human experience.
It's to fall in love, It's to travel,
It's to be mesmerized at the sheer beauty of planet Earth,
It's to have kids, it's to raise them,
it's to pay huge bills to send them off to colleges
which don't make any sense in the first place, It's the human experience and it's beautiful.
So that's why we put experiences there.
Now experiences could also be the experience of driving a
luxury car, living in a beautiful home,
dining in five star restaurants, those are beautiful experiences
which you can put as your goals as well.
Now, why growth?
It's because, Tony Robbins gave a remarkable ted talk
and he said, “there are two great spiritual needs,
if you do not fulfill these two needs, your psyche, your soul feels deprived,
and you may be happy, but you will not be fulfilled”.
And those two were growth and contribution.
Growth meaning, the desire to grow.
While we are here to have experiences we are also here to grow, to learn,
to remind ourselves to be reminded of our own greatness,
to pick up new skills, to challenge our brain.
That's also such a wonderful thing about being human.
And the final one is to contribute.
I believe we're all connected, that's the model that I choose for the world.
There is a theory called the Gaia hypothesis by James Lovelock,
that says that the entire planet earth is one giant organism,
and we are all connected.
Not just you and me, and everyone else in this room,
but us and nature, and the oceans and the atmosphere and the
seas, we are all connected.
Contribution then becomes paramount because if we are all connected,
then one of the surest ways to elevate happiness and have meaning
is to contribute to fellow human beings.
Studies show that when you give, when you contribute
levels of happiness go up.
People who volunteer, tend to be happier,
people who do good work for the world tend to be happier.
It's just a wonderful way of making yourself happy.
So these three questions become a framework that I use to understand people.
So you want to make sure that you pick a goal that truly excites you.
I'm not saying college is unnecessary, what I'm saying is,
learning, education should be something that is an end goal,
that means you want to learn for the sake of learning
not for the sake of passing a standardized test
because that's the only path you can see.
OK so the good goals must scare you a little,
that's your check to know that you're dreaming bigger
and they should excite you, that's your check to know
that you've picked a worthy end goal.