- Gives you better sex.
Increases your good cholesterol.
Gives you more friends.
Gives you more meaning, engagement,
life satisfaction and happiness.
(inspirational orchestral music)
If you have a purpose-driven life,
it adds years to your life.
You live longer.
Let me share two stories with you.
Story number one, we're interviewing
one of those schoolteachers.
She says, "The first year I taught was heaven.
"The second year I taught was hell.
"I had five boys that second year
"and they were incorrigible.
"And there was one kid in particular, he was impossible.
"One day, this kid's in the doorway of the classroom
"and he's kicking and moving his arms
"and making noises, and I lost it."
She said, "I'm ashamed to say these words,
"but I walked towards that kid
"with the intention of kicking him.
"Thank heavens he got up and ran away.
(audience laughs)
"I kept walking.
"I went to the principal's office.
"I said, this is it, it's him or me.
"And the principal took the kid out."
She said, "I felt terrible, so I went to my colleagues
"and poured my heart out, and they said to me,
"you are not the key to every door."
And as she said those words, she burst into tears
in the interview, and we waited a long time
and then she looked up and said, "I hated that,
"those words, you can't be the key to every door."
She said, "So I decided to become the key to every door.
"Instead of pushing disruptive kids away,
"I began to seek them out.
"I began to bring them into my world.
"I read every book I could find.
"I kept notes.
"I ran experiments.
"I kept notes on the experiments."
And then she kind of pulled herself up and said,
"Today, I am the key to every door.
"When there's a disruptive, troubled kid in the school,
"they say, give her to Miss so-and-so.
"She seems to know what to do with them."
That's a profoundly important story.
It's a story of transformative learning.
When I have a higher purpose, I find the energy
and the courage to go outside my comfort zone.
Now, the second story is a lot closer to home.
I once had a daughter.
She was single.
She was living in Washington, D.C.
She had reached that point in life where she said,
"There's not a good man left on the earth."
And then she found one and she got really excited.
The relationship grew, and then, one day, our phone rang.
She's talking to her mother and I know what's going on.
This guy just dumped her.
This daughter is the firstborn child.
Many firstborn children share a common characteristic.
If they're miserable, they want you to be miserable, too.
(audience laughs)
And she said, "I'm coming home this weekend."
I thought, "Oh, no, no."
(audience laughs)
Her mother hangs up and says, "You're the father.
"You go to the airport and pick her up."
I said (groans), so the next day I go pick her up.
She gets in the car and she doesn't say hello, how are you.
She says, "That no good dirty da-da-da-da-da."
Five minutes later, she takes a breath and I said,
"Are you problem-solving or purpose-finding?"
We're finally pulling in the driveway.
She takes another breath.
I say it again.
She says, "What are you talking about?"
And she said, "This is the real world."
I said, "Well, I think it applies to the real world."
By then we were in the house, I pull out
a sheet of paper out of my file,
and it says "Robert Quinn, life statement."
She looks at it and then she grows
kinda quiet, and she looks up and says,
"When you feel bad, you read this?"
I said, "No, when I feel bad, I rewrite it.
"It's been rewritten hundreds of times."
She said, "Yeah, I can hardly
"understand some of this stuff."
I said, "Yeah, it's written
"to a customized audience, one person."
Then, the first miracle happened.
She said, "Do ya think I could write one of these?"
And I said, "I'm sure you can."
She went in the bedroom.
For a day and a half, she worked on her life statement.
The miracle was I did not have
to suffer during that day and a half.
(audience laughs)
She got on the plane.
She flew home to D.C.
A couple days pass, I get an email.
She said, "He called me."
Oh, this'll be interesting, and she says,
"So I wrote him this letter."
And I'm reading this letter that she's attached.
It's incredibly vulnerable, open,
honest, and then at the bottom, it says,
"And my roommate said I can't give this to him."
Now, that's an interesting thing.
Why can't we give this letter to this guy?
You don't tell some guy that dumped you
that here's how you feel, and then she said,
"What my roommates don't understand
"is that what he thinks doesn't matter."
Whoa, wait a minute.
A few days ago, what he thought caused your life to shatter.
Now, she's saying what he thinks doesn't matter.
She's saying, this is who I really am.
Didn't know this a while ago.
Now, I know it.
It doesn't matter what other people think.
You see, when you clarify your purpose,
you take back your external locus of control,
where you worry about what other people think,
and you take an internal locus.
You don't become insensitive.
You don't become rebellious.
You become centered.
You become powerful.
Now, here's the interesting thing.
In the next few months,
she began to be promoted.
Her career turned.
Why?
This was a dating breakup.
Why is her career taking off?
Because, when you find purpose
and meaning in what you're doing
in one area of your life, it grows
in every area of your life 'cause you are one person.
That company had a woman coming in with the same dresses on,
body looked the same, but it wasn't the same employee.
This was a woman now full of leadership for the first time.
When someone has that meaning
and that integrity, things start to change.
The research says, when you give up self-interested goals,
where most of us are most of the time, and you take on
contributive goals, you function differently.
The biology changes.
The thought process changes.
Learning accelerates.
You grow more.
The only thing that I'm left to conclude is, you and I are
designed to be purpose-seeking mechanisms.
You've been shaped by life, you've had bad experiences
and good experiences, and both the bad experiences
and the good experiences are there
to teach you something about you.
And if you look very carefully at those,
you can determine what your purpose is.
Every person in this room can clarify
the purpose of their life, become the key to every door.
(inspirational orchestral music)